Antanas Sutkus: Planet Lithuania

Antanas Sutkus (born 1939) ranks among Europe’s great humanist photographers. Although he lived and worked in occupied Lithuania on the periphery of the Soviet Empire, he profoundly influenced Soviet photography in terms of form and content. Sutkus developed his visual language in the 1960s, establishing the foundation for the Lithuanian school of photography. He was interested in absolutely everything: children, lovers and the elderly, modernity and tradition, joy and painful farewells, nature and the city.

Sutkus’ photographs invariably revolve around Lithuania and its people; they were his “Kosmos” in which he found a place for everything, and he formulated his zest for their lives in his long-term project The People of Lithuania. Sutkus’ undertaking was a bold one during the Cold War and under Soviet domination; his pictures were an expression of personal life behind the Iron Curtain.