I hide the twenty Litas note in my right glove and reach for the five Litas coin with my left hand.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t beat you. It just have to be like that”, an adolescent hooligan a couple of years older is trying to comfort me holding a pair of brass knuckles, the effect of which has been so vividly described to me a minute before, in one of his hands.

Growing up in one of the blocks of Kaunas during the tenebrous 90s, I filled the pockets of aggressive ‘beggars’ with many coins or notes, a wallet or my first cell phone.
I grew up among the many grey apartment buildings in Kalniečiai, one of the largest blocks of Kaunas.
However, another Kaunas coexisted simultaneously and I met it a bit later, learning from the last forms of the Kalniečiai Secondary School (the present Antanas Smetona Gymnasium).
I discovered the other Kaunas in museums, artist studios, the reserved modernist streets of Žaliakalnis, a couple of the bars popular then, and the backstage of the Kauno National Drama Theatre as well as the “Aura” Dance Theatre. Then I entered the Faculty of Arts of the Vilnius University of Art, where I felt the special pulse of Kaunas academic aristocracy.
I must confess I have much of Kaunas inside me. It is especially obvious in my photographic journeys, where I have to adapt to difficult and changing situations and communicate with different people. I understand that although the first, harsh Kaunas is almost extinct today, there won’t be the other Kaunas without it.
I still hear many stereotypes and jokes about my city; however, I must honestly express that Kaunas is so very special to me in its multilayered structure.
Riding a bicycle across the city, I can see how diverse and intertwined it is: the industrial Šančiai and Vilijampolė blocks, monolithic sleeping blocks, Žaliakalnis and the Centre, the banks of the Nemunas and the Neris. This entire miscellaneous social network is united by nationality and cultural contingency.
The cultural nugget of Kaunas is unspoiled and unpolished, and thus so interesting to me. It is a city that offers you the possibility to consider it to be your own: you can have “your places”, routes and secrets, and “patent” various discoveries there.
The Temporary Capital City is self-confident and aware of its course. The culture here is, in many aspects, original and authentic. The processes (art festivals at a global level, growing communities of authors and individual artistic initiatives) happening in my city today prove the statement well.
I am absolutely sure Kaunas will surprise us even more tomorrow.
 
 
During the almost ten years that Artūras Morozovas has been working as a photojournalist, he has highlighted events in Lithuania and Europe and covered sensitive social issues. The photojournalist also documented military conflicts in the Caucasus, Palestine and Ukraine. The photographer from Kaunas received a variety of awards and his works were published in world-famous media, such as The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel, etc. Artūras, who cooperates with the Delfi news portal in Lithuania, is one of the developers of Nanook.lt, the first multimedia documentary platform. Nanook not only tells stories, its educational program also helps the younger generation and students who undertook internships there to improve. Since 2015, Artūras has been one of the lecturers at the Photography Department of the J. Vienožinskis Faculty of Arts of Kaunas University of Applied Sciences.