Celebration 2005-2009

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In “Celebration”, Jonas Petronis was seeking to photographically document the ways in which a company of his friends used to “reload their matrixes” after hard work and studying. As Jonas Petronis says, “photographing parties became an attempt to catch up with the about-to-be-missed boat.

“I was in the third year of studies, when I started actively photographing the parties of my friends. I thought after finishing university, a certain stage of my life will be over, and i will not have any visual proof of that”. Indeed, photographing was a way of a superior participation, revealing the ultimate goal of a party, which is to make the instants last long, if not forever. Captured on film, impressions remain for long. Consequently, pictures reflected the feelings, atmospheres, and also suggested conclusions.

With difference to the technically perfect contemporary colour photography, pictures of partying of Jonas Petronis do not look like those of the 21st century. Seized through an old-fashioned TTL, stilled on a grainy B&W film and printed on traditional paper in a gamma from rich grey to complete black, “Celebration” pictures simulate photographs that in the times of prosperity of B&W photography would have been discarded, because of the lack of variety of tones and because of the abusive look.

This Black and Grey photography, however, has a specific meaning in the pictures and prints of Jonas Petronis. It speaks of the perpetual blind alleys of the young people. Almost white-less B&W photography loses the sense of time of the party itself, and in photography, making the pictures as icons of decadence non-specific, but symbolic about any time, any place, regardless of town, country, continent.

The path of the partying youth, depicted in “Celebration”, winds through the vertigo of the good time, the grey ashes of the lost time, the helpless smiles, the head-aches of the next morning and the hopes of a party-less tomorrow with colours of the perfect White Balance.

No more celebration!.. At least, until the next weekend…

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Jonas Petronis

was born in Kėdainiai (1982). Now he lives and works in Kaunas. He started his acquaintance with photography at Kaunas School of Photo Art (2005-07), where he became inspired by conventional analog black and white photography. In 2007 he acquired his Bachelor degree at the Arts Institute of Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas) and pursued his education in Public Communications program at the same university. Since 2005 his works featured in group exhibitions in Lithuania. Jonas Petronis’ works were shown in Young photographers’ Competition exhibition at Vilnius Prospektas Gallery of Photography, Vilnius and Fujifilm Gallery of photography, Kaunas (2007), Kaunas Photo festival “Humour in Lithuanian Photography“ (2008). In 2010 he was one of the finalists of the, „Surrau Photo Win“ in Italy.

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