Weekend Portfolio: Žilvinas Kropas

THE SOLAR SCRIPT PHENOMENON

An excerpt from Prof. Dr. Remigjus Venckus’s A critical review of Žilvinas Kropas’s photography:

“Representing the trend of experimental photography, known as solargraphy, the artist questions the phenomenon of writing, providing the viewer with intentional directions that make us reflect on the very origin of the title of photography: the Greek phos (φως) means light, while graphis (γραφις) is the paintbrush. Which means that with minimal means Žilvinas Kropas is able to capture what is written or painted by nature. This is what he thinks about it:

“I am a cronicler of time, all the time that has passed is layered in one photography, there is little I as an artist can do here… The final photograph is full of surprises and uncertainties, many strange things. Photography may be unpredictable and mysterious, somehow out of this Earth, like some other abstract world. It makes one wish to observe it for a very long time, and immerse into it with one’s thoughts. […] My artworks are practically created by the sun, the air, water, i.e. all the natural environment that does not depend on me. All artworks are unique, they are impossible to reproduce. “

When I regard the photographs of Žilvinas Kropas, I never stop asking myself about what photography is. I come to the conclusion that, on the one hand, we are used to attributing to photography the function of documenting the recognizable world or beautifying the reality; on the other hand, in this way we are forgetting that photographs may be capricious, characteristic, noncompromising – like bright personalities. In this contemporary world of universal depreciation of the image artists like Žilvinas Kropas return the character of photography to the Olympus of arts.  

Žilvinas Kropas’s attitude to photography is partly and intuitively relatable to the origin of a term that defines the negative-positive process, invented by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 – 1877). Calotype is the title of a phototechnique that evolutionizes much like poetry: first, at the begining of the technology it was named photogenical drawing and héliographie, which means solar script, second, the Greek kalos (καλός) means beautiful, and tupos (τύπος) is impression. Without doubt, the artworks of Žilvinas Kropas give an impression of beauty.”

To view more of Žilvinas’s work, visit his instagram here.