Snieguolė Michelkevičiūtė „A Women About Men“

In 1977 Michelkevičiūtė began a series „A Woman About Men“ that confronts with other photographers works as depicting nude men was highly unusual back in a day. She was most interested in older, scarred bodies that opposed to ‘masculinity’ stereotypes. According to art historian Raminta Jurėnaitė „The artist improvises with these models in nature and a studio, inviting them to move naked, to stand up, to lie down, to kneel, to climb, to fall down or to drape themselves. The artist finds the rough line of drapery to be close to a plain, rough male body. These improvisations of movement give rise to the staged “alive pictures” where the attention is focused on the movement of the body.“
According to a curator Vilma Samulionytė, exhibition is an important context for Lithuanian photography history. “Meanwhile woman’s body was eroticized, Michelkevičiūtė studies man’s body, movement and details. You cannot see a model’s face making a man more abstract. In other words, you can instantly feel the unknown, when ironizing and unveiling her own relationship with the model, or maybe not only with him?”
Snieguolė Michelkevičiūtė was born in Kaunas on February 3, 1953. In 1974-1979 she studied at Kaunas Polytechnic Institute, where she received the diploma of an engineer. From 1989 a member of the Lithuanian Photographers Association. Her works are owned by Lithuanian Art Museum, National Library of France, private art collectors.