The name of vilnietis artist Algirdas Šeškaus is often mentioned in the art and photographic history texts, marking the break-up stage of Lithuanian photography. The author made his debut in 1980 at the Exhibition of Young Photographers organized by the Lithuanian Photoart Society in Vilnius. Already the first works he has publicly demonstrated have revealed a new phenomenon of inadequate Soviet culture.
The photographer is characterized by interest in the nature of the image, the combination of intention and meaning with the fact (when the event is the shooting itself), the deconstructualization of the content. Developing creativity without direction – without themes, without objects of artistic research, without conceptual projects and cultivating the aesthetics of "amateurism", he constantly balanced between artistic nihilism and fetishism of creative act, undergroundo and the official scene, between collectivism and individuality. The artist was critical of the traditional representation of reality, modernist originality and the need for innovation in general. This manifested itself in blurred and compositeally "untidy" shots, non-aggressive, uncontracted, minimalist print shape, an option for uninteresting, unworthy content. Emphasizing the "dilettante" stylistics of his works, the author does not give them names, does not indicate the exact place and date of creation, ignores the standard principles of displaying photography.
A. Šeškaus' creation influenced the emergence of postmodern trends in Lithuanian photography art. In the early 1980s, a new photographic language was spoken by Alfonsas Budvytis, Vytautas Balčytis, Remigijus Pačėsa, Gintaras Zinkevičius and other photographers of the new wave, who demonstrated the position of passive observers, an alternative to the prevailing romantic world. The artist's photographs uncover (neo)avant-garde (anti)aesthetics, experimental expression, distinctive ideas developed outside the traditional Lithuanian school of photography.
The author's work from 1975 to 1983 was distributed in Pohulianka (J. Basanavičiaus Street), where he lived, worked and assembled an archive of photographs and graphics exhibited in the exhibition, expanding the territory of the artist's expression.
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