All these aspirations and social activity relocated itself from the streets of the city center to the passages of the shopping center. It seemed, “The Society of the Spectacle” gained almost ideal form in the space of the shopping center, separated from the imperfect world outside. However, boredom and weariness of the participants of the “spectacle”, the longing for unfulfilled dreams and for the secret behind the visible surface also revealed itself even more clear here.
Tomas Pabedinskas observed the changing habits of city dwellers between 2011-2016. Following the tradition of American street and road photography the author has sought to capture the in-between moments of uncertainty, when visitors of the shopping center or staff loses touch with the provided script of consumption and when the feeling of human loneliness reveals itself in the artificial setting of entertainment. In the photographs such moments become the generalized image of the spectacle, in which not the society, but the isolated loners act.
Tomas Pabedinskas is a photographer, a photography theoretician, a critic and a curator. The author lectures at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania), he has published two monographs on contemporary Lithuanian photography, constantly publishes scholarly articles and criticism, has staged personal exhibitions and has participated in group exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad.
