Portraitzine is a project by Visvaldas Morkevičius, comprising a series of photographes as results of the visual anthropology research. The author sees Portraitzine as a collection of “journeys.” A journey is understood as a metaphor that gives a base for this project, defined by such parameters as a choice of a destination (a photographic subject), documentation of displacement (a photographe), and a curated collection of entries (a publication). It aims to relay the experience of undiscovered, often exotic environments and their denizens. Meticulously looking for details that could outline their identities, the research glances over the quotidian surroundings and gazes at postures that characters take in front of the camera: an artificial observer put in between the photographer and his subject. The photographer, by no means assumed as being in a superior position, accepts the role of “a tourist” who collects memorabilia and ephemera through observation. In Portraitzine, these ‘souvenirs’ speak not about a country or a city, but about people, their living and creative environments and their daily. Thus the focus point considers the person in a photographic frame altogether with his / her environs, emotional condition, personal qualities and temper, some of which have yet to be deciphered. The route is planned carefully, or happens by an accident like an irresistible ‘last minute’ call. Portraying people in an ethnographic manner, Visvaldas takes up the project as a form of a journey, and presents its outcomes in a visual logbook format - Portraitzine publication.
Text by Ignas Petronis