Antanas Sutkus (born 27 June 1939) is a Lithuanian photographer.
Sutkus is a recipient of the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts, the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, and the Dr. Erich Salomon Award. He was one of the co-founders and a president of the Lithuanian Association of Art Photographers ().
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 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.
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. 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." 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".
He co-founded the Lithuanian Association of Art Photographers in 1969. He is well known for his life-long survey, People of Lithuania, begun in 1976 to document the changing life and people of the Lithuanian SSR.
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.
Publications Neringa. Vilnius: Mintis, 1982. . Text in English, German, Lithuanian, and Russian. Lietuva = Lithuaniua. Vilnius: Lietuvos Fotomeninink Sąjungos Fondas, 1992. . Edited and with a text by Alfred Bumblauskas. Antanas Sutkus: Fotografijos: 1959-1999 = Antanas Sutkus: Photographs: 1959-1999. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2000. . Retrospektyva = Retrospective. Vilnius: Sapna Sala, 2009. . Lithuanian Portraits. With a text by Nadim Julien Samman. Accompanied an exhibition at White Space Gallery, London, and Signs of Time Gallery, Moscow."Lithuanian Portraits/Signs of Time: Antanas Sutkus" White Space Gallery. Accessed 22 September 2016 People of Lithuania. Kaunas, Lithuania: Kaunas Photography Gallery; Lithuanian Photographer's Association, 2015. . 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.
Awards 1997: Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas. 2003: Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts 2017: Dr. Erich Salomon Award"The Dr. Erich Salomon Award of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)", Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie. Accessed 19 October 2017.
Exhibitions Un Regard Libre, Le château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France, March–April 2011."Antanas Sutkus" Le château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse. Accessed 22 September 2016 Nostalgia for Bare Feet, The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow, April–May 2016."Босоногое детство. Антанас Суткус" Accessed 21 September 2016
References Antanui Sutkui – 70 (2009-06-30). Bernardinai.lt
"Remaking Europe in the margins: Northern Europe after the enlargements" Christopher Browning, Ashgate Publishing, p. 41
"Beyond memory: Soviet nonconformist photography and photo-related works of art" Diane Neumaier, Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, p. 251
"Exploring Photography: Photographers: Antanas Sutkus" Victoria and Albert Museum
External links
Virtual exhibition of Sutkus' works and a short bio Sutkus profile at White Space Gallery