Mindaugas Kavaliauskas. A-SPOT

Since 2015, photographer Mindaugas Kavaliauskas has been working on the second part of his long-term project “travel’AIR”—a story about the global phenomenon of plane spotting. It took the photographer ten years to capture photographs with sufficient geographical coverage, to document and update the stories of the subjects, and to prepare the book. The photo album “A-Spot: A Journey into the World of Plane Spotting” is Mindaugas Kavaliauskas’ fifth monographic photo album.

The book is unusual in several ways. The cover holds two books: one for photographs, the other for text. Both can be flipped through simultaneously—immersing oneself in the large-format photographs in one section while reading the subjects’ stories undisturbed in the other.

According to the book’s author, one might think that the theme of “A-Spot” is shallow and niche, but the book tells the stories of people who, when looking at airplanes, seek not only entertainment, education, or a good time, but also peace, rest, and therapy—healing their longing and anxiety while searching for hope. Among the thirty-five airports documented in the book is one in Ukraine. In this way, the book invites us to remember the people of Ukraine suffering from the war, whose dream is to see passenger airliners in the sky, not enemy missiles or drones.

“A-Spot” photographs have been exhibited at photography festivals such as Fotonoviembre (Spain), InterPhoto (Poland), and Photaumnales (France), as well as in galleries in Kaunas, Klaipėda, Vilnius, and elsewhere. They have been published by The New York Times (U.S.), Die Zeit (Germany), Il Tempo (Italy), and online and print publications in other countries, including Lithuania.