Antanas Sutkus

Antanas Sutkus is one of the co-founders and the president of the Lithuanian Photographic Art Society. His black-and-white photographs represent the Lithuanian school of photography, with a focus on human beings at the heart of his work. These photos are now housed in some of the world’s greatest museums.

In 1940, when he was just one year old, his father chose to take his own life rather than collaborate with the Soviet invaders. During his childhood, Sutkus contracted tuberculosis and miraculously survived, spending two years in a sanatorium where he devoured works of world literature.

From 1950 to 1989, Sutkus captured numerous images that were disturbing to the Soviet censorship and regime, which he kept as precious testimonies of that era.

He famously photographed Jean-Paul Sartre in the Lithuanian dunes at Nida along the Baltic coast, as well as Simone de Beauvoir during their visit to Lithuania in the summer of 1965.

He currently lives in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

(www.antanassutkus.com)