Title: Siberian exiles
Description: 6 parts: Yakutia; Altai; Eyewitnesses; Drawings and Expedition; Rimantas0 & booklet.00"This, the first part of my trilogy entitled 'Siberian Exiles', focuses on the experiences of six Lithuanian survivors: Irena, Nijol?, Jonas M, Vilius, Jonas P and Vaidutis, who were deported as children to the Laptev Sea above the polar circle. During the first major mass deportation in 1941, their families were sent to the Altai region in the south of Siberia to cut down trees and work as farm labourers. In 1942, they were moved, along with three thousand other Lithuanians, to the delta of the Lena River, which flows into the Laptev Sea. In this arctic region, winter reigns for ten months a year and the temperature can drop to fifty degrees below zero.0[...]0This book is a journey through history and has become a story about oppression, abuse of power and crimes against humanity. It is also a story about a people who refused to be broken and to give up their identity and culture. It is about the human will to survive and human resilience.00The drawings of Gintautas Martynaitis, a survivor of the deportations, the mostly unpublished archive images and the photos from the expedition of 1989 offer glimpses into the past, while I have endeavoured to capture the present. I have listened to the eyewitness accounts of these events and visited the places where they took place. I have traveled through the Altai and Yakutia in search of traces of this remarkable chapter in history and I have recorded what encountered: the landscape of these remote areas, the villages, the culture, and the indigenous people with their still vivid memories of the time under Stalin."
Subjects: Artistic Photography, German Drawing, Portrait photography, Ethnology, Lithuanians, History, Pictorial works, Deportees, Documentary photography
Places: Russia (Federation), Siberia, Lithuania, Altaĭskiĭ kraĭ, Sakha