Virgilijus Šonta. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind”, so goes the chorus of Bob Dylan’s 1962 song, Blowin’ in the Wind. Earning popularity for the existential questions it raised, the song became the hymn among those around the world fighting for civil rights, becoming as memorable as Martin Luther King Junior’s “I have a dream” speech to the American nation, or the rallying cry from our 1972 anti-Soviet protests in memory of Romas Kalanta – “Laisvę Lietuvai!” [Freedom for Lithuania].

Photographer Virgilijus Šonta (1952-1992) lived in a society with social “norms” dictated by the primitive and brutal Soviet authorities. The artist examined everyday life, measuring his resilience to the system and fluidity within it, testing the sustainability of the “walls” that had been built. In his life he had to straddle the structural provisions set down by institutions and his own personal choices, to find his way between the pressure exerted by the repressive regime and his search for inner freedom. The system led to Šonta’s reticence, self-silencing and secrecy, resulting in his brief albeit stormy and tragic fate (he was murdered aged 40). However, the photographer left behind an enormous legacy. His work expresses itself through melancholic moods, a sense of wonderment in the human being, an archaic connection to nature, an eccentric relationship with his surroundings, experimentation in art and the sensitive aesthetic of photography. It is paradoxical, unpredictable, enigmatic, brilliant.

Encoded in this book are the artist’s key creative and biographical trajectories: his analogue photographic work (Ag), studies and the beginning of his creative expression at the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute (KPI), involvement in the activities of the Lithuanian Society of Art Photography (LFMD), the sinister shadow of the KGB that consumed his life (KGB), his hidden identity (LGBTQ+), American citizenship and journeys to “his” land (USA). Here, as in the artist’s life, there are many secrets, riddles, references hidden “between the lines” and the questions that arose along the way, the answers to which are blowin’ in the wind.

Margarita Matulytė