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Antanas Sutkus

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Sutkus in 1996

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

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

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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" (see illustration of poster above).[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 château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse, France, 2011

Publications

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  • Neringa. Vilnius: Mintis, 1982. OCLC 11114726. Text in English, German, Lithuanian, and Russian.
  • Lietuva = Lithuaniua. Vilnius: Lietuvos Fotomeninink Sąjungos Fondas, 1992. OCLC 442398420. Edited and with a text by Alfred Bumblauskas.
  • Antanas Sutkus: Fotografijos: 1959-1999 = Antanas Sutkus: Photographs: 1959-1999. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2000. ISBN 9789955000242.
  • Retrospektyva = Retrospective. Vilnius: Sapna Sala, 2009. ISBN 9789955611417.
  • Lithuanian Portraits. With a text by Nadim Julien Samman. Accompanied an exhibition at White Space Gallery, London, and Signs of Time Gallery, Moscow.[8]
  • People of Lithuania. Kaunas, Lithuania: Kaunas Photography Gallery; Lithuanian Photographer's Association, 2015. ISBN 9786098099096. With a preface by William A. Ewing and an essay by Margarita Matulytė. Edited by Gintaras Česonis in cooperation with Ewing, Jean-Marc Lacabe and Margarita Matulytė.
  • In Memoriam. London: White Space Gallery, 2016. With a text by Alfonsas Bukontas.
  • Sutkus, Antanas (2020). Children. Göttingen: Steidl GmbH & Co. OHG. ISBN 978-3-95829-709-8. OCLC 1135366689.

Awards

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Exhibitions

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f "An 'epic poem' of life in Soviet Lithuania – in pictures". The Guardian. London. 8 April 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2016.
  2. ^ a b (in Lithuanian) Antanui Sutkui – 70 (2009-06-30). Bernardinai.lt
  3. ^ a b "The Dr. Erich Salomon Award of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)", Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie. Accessed 19 October 2017.
  4. ^ a b c "Exploring Photography: Photographers: Antanas Sutkus" Victoria and Albert Museum
  5. ^ a b c 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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