The photographic project by Lithuanian photographer Tadas Kazakevičius, titled Soon To Be Gone, draws inspiration from the works of 1930s photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Jack Delano. During the Great Depression in the United States, these photographers, led by Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), relentlessly documented images destined to vanish into oblivion. The ongoing migration of people seeking better living conditions was inexorably changing the demographic map of the United States: farms, villages, and small towns were disappearing before everyone’s eyes. All of this was meticulously photographed and archived, demonstrating that the efforts of those photographers were not in vain.

Today, a similar process, albeit different in its proportions and conditions, is taking place in Lithuania. Over the past ten years, continuous migration has caused a reduction in Lithuania’s population by almost one-sixth. Cities that monopolize the economy, attracting young people from rural areas, and an often unsuitable lifestyle adopted by the rural younger generation are inexorably changing the face of the country.

Kazakevičius si interroga: «per quanto tempo ancora le foreste e le vallate della Lituania saranno adornate da vedute di fattorie e villaggi, luoghi dove esiste ancora una comprensione del tempo e della vicinanza totalmente diversa? Per quanto tempo troveremo ancora posti dove un visitatore inaspettato è accolto come un parente stretto e ogni passante viene salutato con un ‘ciao’?»

Kazakevičius wonders: «How much longer will Lithuania’s forests and valleys be adorned with views of farms and villages, places where there is still a completely different understanding of time and proximity? How much longer will we find places where an unexpected visitor is welcomed like a close relative and every passerby is greeted with a ‘hello’?»

courtesy Tadas Kazakevičius