Traces of Everyday Life
What draws me to documentary photography is its ability to uncover quiet truths – the kind that often go unnoticed in the rush of daily life. While photographing in Lithuania, I wasn’t searching for the dramatic or the spectacular. Instead, I found meaning in subtle gestures, fleeting expressions, and the quiet rhythm of public and private spaces. These moments – often overlooked – began to form a portrait of contemporary Lithuania that felt both deeply personal and broadly resonant.
I focused on what I encountered in everyday life: people waiting, passing, pausing – moments suspended between movement and stillness. I wasn’t looking to stage or direct but to notice. The portraits are not just about faces, but about what’s felt in a glance, a posture, a presence. The urban landscapes are spaces I wandered through repeatedly – places that slowly revealed themselves not as backdrops, but as living environments marked by change, memory, and routine.
This work became a way for me to reflect on how personal experience and public space intersect. I hope viewers can find their own rhythm in these images – a kind of visual melody that emerges from the ordinary, where history, emotion, and the everyday quietly overlap.
A massive pile of snow completely buries a disabled parking sign. This photo was taken after heavy winter snowfall near the Maxima store on Savanorių Avenue in Kaunas, where snow removal has overwhelmed designated parking spaces.
An empty billboard stands alone in a snow-covered field beside a rural highway. This deserted structure is located on the road from Lithuania to Poland, highlighting the stark and quiet landscape during winter travel.
A blue wooden cross with a figure of Jesus is nailed to the trunk of a pine tree deep in the forest. This quiet memorial stands in the Novaraistis nature reserve, possibly marking a place of personal significance or remembrance hidden in the woods.
A giant basketball rests on the grass beside a fenced basketball court. The oversized sculpture is part of the public art installation at the House of Basketball in Kaunas, celebrating the city’s deep connection to the sport.
A billboard showing a pair of wide eyes hangs upside down above the wall of a modern residential building. Positioned on Ševčenkos Street in Vilnius, the striking image adds a surreal element to the area’s evolving, creative urban landscape.
A broken bridge slab tilts dramatically over a motorway, with the structure fractured and unsupported. This is the demolished middle section of the A. Meškinis (Kleboniškis) bridge over the Neris River near Kaunas, which collapsed unexpectedly during dismantling in February 2023, prompting safety investigations and reconstruction planning.
A boy balances on traditional wooden stilts in front of a thatched-roof house. Photographed during the celebration of Joninės in Rumšiškės, Lithuania, the moment reflects local folk traditions often revived at the Open-Air Museum’s festive gatherings.
People gather wild grasses and flowers in a meadow to make flower wreaths during the celebration of Joninės in Rumšiškės, Lithuania. The tradition is part of the midsummer festivities, connecting participants with ancient pagan customs and nature.
People enjoying a winter day sledding and playing in the snow in Kleboniškis, a popular recreational area near Kaunas, Lithuania. The snowy slope, framed by pine trees and power lines, becomes a lively gathering spot for families and children during the colder months.
An empty parking lot beside weathered brick buildings near Šiauliai Street in Kaunas. The outline of a demolished structure is still visible on the exposed wall, hinting at the area’s layered architectural history.
A row of industrial silos stands above a modern building adjacent to a beer brewery near Kaunas railway station. This is the Volfas Engelman brewery complex, located at Kaunakiemio g. 2 in Kaunas—just a short walk from the central railway station, and known for its historic brewing tradition dating back to the 19th century as one of Lithuania’s oldest breweries.
A dark, moody view of the Baltic Sea from a ferry en route from Sweden to Lithuania. Subtle waves ripple across the deep water under dim twilight, capturing the calm yet mysterious atmosphere of open sea travel across northern Europe.
A silver car sits atop a rusted shipping container near Betygalos gatvė in Kaunas, surrounded by construction debris and sparse vegetation. The scene captures a raw, transitional urban landscape where improvisation meets industrial decay.
A wheat field stands quietly in the dark, illuminated only by faint ambient light. This photo was taken at night on the Lithuanian side of the Polish–Lithuanian border, highlighting the quiet agricultural character and minimal human presence in the region’s countryside.
Colorful pedal boats shaped like cars sit idle in the rain near the shore. The photo was taken in Nida, Lithuania, at the end of the tourist season, capturing a quiet moment as recreational equipment remains unused due to weather and decreasing visitor activity.
A dust-covered sculpture and construction tools sit in disarray against a brick wall. This scene is from an outdoor sculptor’s workshop at the Sculpture and Vitražas Centre in Kirtimai, Vilnius, showing the raw, hands-on environment where large-scale artworks are created and stored.
Damian Chrobak
Damian Chrobak (born in 1977 in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, Poland) is a documentary photographer whose work explores the subtle rhythms of everyday life in public spaces. His practice spans cities like Warsaw, London, New York, Kaunas, and other locations, capturing spontaneous street moments that reflect both local culture and universal human behaviors.
Blending seriousness with quiet humor, Chrobak’s photographs transform ordinary encounters into layered narratives. His images function as visual notes – standalone records that invite personal interpretation and reveal the cultural textures of the environments that he moves through.
After studying at the Warsaw Academy of Photography, Chrobak moved to London in 2004, continuing his education at the University of the Arts London and the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. In 2010, he joined the Polish Association of Visual Artists and founded Un-Posed, a street photography collective focused on candid, unfiltered visual storytelling.
Chrobak’s work has been widely published across the UK, New Zealand, the US, Germany, Poland, and other European countries. He is currently based in Kaunas, Lithuania, where he continues to expand his archive and explore the everyday through his lens.