Antanas Sutkus was born in Kluoniskiai, Lithuania on June 27th, 1939. During this time, Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union and was officially known as the Lithuanian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic). When a child, Sutkus decided to purchase a camera after realizing he did not have enough money to purchase a bicycle. He began to grow as a photographer and blossomed into a prominent documentary photojournalist of his time.
The Soviet Union was heavily invested in projecting propaganda to its citizens, exemplifying an expectation to be model citizens and workers. Sutkus wanted to show a different prospective to the world; the truth. He went on to create an extensive project titled “The People of Lithuania,” which was meant to show everyday people living their life in the form of black and white photography. Sutkus created an astonishing amount of portraits, most of which were impossible to print in the Soviet Union because they did not project the “perfect society” that the government wished to depict. He went on to become the founder and chair of the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers, an organization that helps “Lithuanian photographers gain international recognition” (whitespacegallery.co.uk).
Among him were also other photojournalists that followed in his footsteps and had similar goals in mind. Aleksandras Macijauskas started a series that depicted “daily life in small Lithuanian towns” during his career as a staff photographer for the Evening News (icp.org). Romualdas Pozerskis has worked with the Photography Art Society in Lithuania since 1975 and his work is meant to “combine the tragic and the humorous” (prabook.com). Lastly, Arunas Baltenas has black and white photographs of Lithuanian history and art in notable museums such as the National Museum of Lithuania in Vilnius and The French National Library in Paris (arunasbaltenas.com).
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AO9mXUhcpr45aSJxqC2KKgcXw4JhW-AjhSkY59uph4k/edit?usp=sharing
Sources
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2016/apr/08/lithuania-soviet-photographer-antanas-sutkus-in-pictures
- https://monovisions.com/antanas-sutkus-biography-documentary-people-photographer/
- https://birdinflight.com/inspiration/experience/20160503-sutkus-sartre-interview.html
- http://www.whitespacegallery.co.uk/artist/antanas-sutkus/
- https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/aleksandras-macijauskas?all/all/all/all/0
- https://birdinflight.com/inspiration/experience/romualdas-pozerskis-i-have-always-been-free.html
- https://prabook.com/web/romualdas.pozerskis/1720477
- http://www.arunasbaltenas.com/biography/