Reading by Marian Drew

Marian Drew, photographic artist
Adjunct Assoc. Professor, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

Eve Wicks’ book, In Sunshine and Shadow: Reflections on Lithuanian Immigrant Life, tells the important cultural, historical and emotional story of first generation Lithuanian migrants in Brisbane, Australia. The author’s accomplished photographic works portray people, objects and environments that capture a Lithuanian aesthetic, a poetic response as well as historical record. Meticulous research and accounts frame the photographic narrative.
 
Wicks’ own memory and longing for the Motherland is evident when she writes ‘When I look at my favourite photograph of my mother Klara, when she was young, her heart shaped face inclined, like the outline of a map of Lithuania, ….’  There is melancholy in the remembering, a sadness for what was lost, but there is also an optimism in the golden light of artfully acknowledged histories.