What do I see?

What would I recommend to a young photographer?

"Well, just click away...

Point at something that takes your fancy and click

You can spend time setting it up, but it will probably have passed by, so just click. Click and click ... keep clicking,
then one day, it will all just click into place."

Photography - what is it exactly?
Technical photography is none of my interest - I have very strange vision, blurry, stigmatic, with or without glasses so I contend myself with simply capturing the light I see.

This light may be focussed or blurry, it may be low-light or candle-lit, it may be sun-drenched or blinding, but whatever I point towards, I feel it has drawn me in for a reason, sometimes I know why but many times I have just a gut feeling that that click will deliver some image gold.

Not content with one image of the subject, I collect many images, from slightly different positions and angles.

Then it's playtime.

Wooden Universes

Series from "Fractured", represented in the art show "Trees of Boroondara",  the book Wooden Universes and from private collections

Like  the million other image makers, I work on a computer, generally interacting image with image, working with a few images in juxtaposition introducing an element of time shift.

Representation

DNA Gallery
min @ imaging.com.au

I am Australian and have lived here most of my life. My first language though, was Lithuanian. My father, Viktoras Simankevicius studied graphic and fine art in Freiburg at the L’ecole des Artes - he was born in St Petersburg but at the age of one, moved to Vilnius where he grew up and went through school until around 17 until being displaced during WWII where he moved to Freiburg. In 1949, he emigrated to Australia where he met and married my mother Dana Matulaityte (originally from Kybartai). Viktoras’ skill in drawing was highly regarded and he became a graphic designer/commercial artist.

After High School, I first studied electronic music for 4 years through the Electronic studies department at Melbourne University as well as through development courses at Adult Education with Felix Werder - I then went on to study fine art at Prahran College in Melbourne. I began to be interested in the moving image and went on to Film and Television School where I explored the “noise” of imagery, using a camera lens to capture what I tended to call the “unseen”. Using the background of electronic sound, the foreground of moving textures, my foundations into the “unseen” was ratified. A need for commercial return led me to become a graphic designer where I have worked ever since, leaving my artistic endeavours as a passionate interest and self-development. The introduction to digital photography has landed me a tool in which I now explore the “unseen” through juxtaposition of image on image, giving the chance to explore Time over Position/Place, Space and Form, an homage to the early 20th Century futurist artists, the cubists as well as blending in impressionism along with Post-Modern impressionism.

The series “Fractured” represented throughout this site, is a volume of work spanning some intense few years which contains a collection of mini-series: commentaries on Architecture, Fire, Water, Trees, Landscape amongst other interests. “Urban Mangle”, like other fractures, is a commentary on the collision of form, its materials, shapes and its position over time and space, reflecting on the shape of the beast that lurks within a structure and not focussing on straight documentation of an architectural piece.