Born in Lithuania, Indre Serpytyte is highly concerned with the impact of the war on European history and perception.
Her photographs are a result of a thoughtful investigation into the political history of the Cold War and its catastrophic consequences. They stem from her own displacement and separation from her Eastern European origins.
Serpytyte was awarded the National Media Museum Photography Award, for a series of striking still-life images of false houses that present the viewer with a narrative of intrigue. The series 'Former NKVD - MVD - MGB - KGB Buildings' is centred on the after-effects of WWII in Lithuania. These black and white images tell an almost forgotten story of the domestic conflicts of war, in which people were interrogated and tortured in what were once family homes.
Rather than representing the buildings themselves, or showing the inhabitants or victims directly, Serpytyte uses commissioned, hand-carved wooden models, based on archival research and site visits to comment on both the physical and humanitarian scale of the conflict and to enunciate the echo of the memory of the events as they have faded over time. The houses seem like cold corpses, sculptures symbolic of the empty spaces where their real selves once thrived, and where memories are slowly dying. They are sealed, containing their stories, and their entity becomes placeless.
Serpytyte received her BA Hons Editorial Photography at the University of Brighton, and MA from Royal College of Art, in London, where she lives now. In 2009, she was awarded the Hoopers Gallery and Metro Imaging prizes for 1944 - 1991 series. The works has also been acquired by the Victoria and Albert museum for their photography collection and included in the catalogue created with Martin Barnes and Simon Baker.
Previously she was awarded the prestigious Jerwood award for A State of Silence series. Her work has been published in Portfolio, Hotshoe and The British Journal of Photography.