The idea of creating this series was born after reading the poem by Joseph Brodsky "Lithuanian Nocturne" and a source of inspiration I found in this passage:

…over the Baltic wave,

I buzz just like that monoplane,

like some Darius and Girenas,

though not as vulnerable.

Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas were two American pilots of Lithuanian origin who tried to set the record in flight range in 1933. They flew from New York to Kaunas in a small airplane, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, but not far from the Polish city Myślibórz when there was just a little bit to the destination, the plane crashed and both pilots died. The causes of this accident are still unknown.

Although the text became a starting point for my reflections, I didn't want my images to simply illustrate it, so I invented a parallel world, which just indirectly correlates with the poem.

My story is about the dream of every person to break out from the vice of all kinds of prohibitions and fly away to a distant unknown in search of unlimited freedom and find there his true motherland and real home. Also it is a story about a personal attempt doomed to fail to find a way to himself through time and space, breaking the invisible boundary between himself and his mirror twin, the mortal Castor and immortal Pollux.

In the result the book was made in Leporello format, which allows the viewers to choose how to browse the images and find their own ending in this story.

This project was created as part of the group exhibition “Lithuanian nocturne” curated by art-magazine "Iskusstvo" (Moscow)

The book “J.B. about men floating in the air”