Antanas Sutkus

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Sutkus in 1996 Ba-sutkus-antanas-1996-soviet-foto.jpg
Sutkus in 1996

Antanas Sutkus (born 27 June 1939) is a Lithuanian photographer. [1]

Contents

Sutkus is a recipient of the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts, the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, [2] and the Dr. Erich Salomon Award. [3] He was one of the co-founders and a president of the Lithuanian Association of Art Photographers (Lithuanian : Lietuvos fotografijos meno draugija). [4]

Life and work

Sutkus was born on 27 June 1939 in Kluoniškiai, Kaunas district, Lithuania.

He studied journalism at Vilnius University in the late 1950s; at the time the Lithuanian SSR [4] was part of the Soviet Union. He became disillusioned by the confines of the Soviet-controlled press and began taking photographs, wanting to find a way to make his camera "a weapon for the underground" in portraying resistance to the USSR. [5]

Sutkus concentrated on black and white portraits of ordinary people in their everyday life rather than the model citizens and workers promoted by Soviet propaganda. [6] [1] He photographed children, who represented a kind of freedom: "Children have a world with its own laws, rules, its own happiness and sadness. To enter it, you need to feel that you are a kid. Adults and children are different stories." [5] A series of mid-1960s portraits of children, often with adults in the shot pointedly faceless and irrelevant, was collected in a 2020 book. He took a photograph that became famous of a communist "Young Pioneer" boy with shaven head and very sad expression which got him called before the central committee and denounced as "photography's Solzhenitsyn". [5]

He co-founded the Lithuanian Association of Art Photographers in 1969. [1] He is well-known for his life-long survey, People of Lithuania, [1] begun in 1976 to document the changing life and people of the Lithuanian SSR. [4]

Sutkus had an opportunity to spend time with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1965 when they visited Lithuania. One image, taken against the white sand of Nida, is highly regarded as capturing Sartre's ideas. [7]

Exhibition of Sutkus's work at Le chateau d'eau, pole photographique de Toulouse, France, 2011 Toulouse - Chateau d'eau Laganne - 20110325 (1).jpg
Exhibition of Sutkus's work at Le château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse, France, 2011

Publications

Awards

Exhibitions

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "An 'epic poem' of life in Soviet Lithuania – in pictures". The Guardian . London. 8 April 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2016.
  2. 1 2 (in Lithuanian) Antanui Sutkui – 70 (2009-06-30). Bernardinai.lt
  3. 1 2 "The Dr. Erich Salomon Award of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)", Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie. Accessed 19 October 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 "Exploring Photography: Photographers: Antanas Sutkus" Victoria and Albert Museum
  5. 1 2 3 Adams, Tim (7 November 2021). "The big picture: Antanas Sutkus captures childhood defiance in Soviet Lithuania". The Observer.
  6. ↑ "Remaking Europe in the margins: Northern Europe after the enlargements" Christopher Browning, Ashgate Publishing, p. 41
  7. ↑ "Beyond memory: Soviet nonconformist photography and photo-related works of art" Diane Neumaier, Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, p. 251
  8. ↑ "Lithuanian Portraits/Signs of Time: Antanas Sutkus" Archived 2016-09-23 at the Wayback Machine White Space Gallery. Accessed 22 September 2016
  9. ↑ "Antanas Sutkus" Archived 2016-09-23 at the Wayback Machine Le château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse. Accessed 22 September 2016
  10. ↑ "Босоногое детство. Антанас Суткус" Archived 2016-10-03 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 21 September 2016
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