Jean-Paul Sartre in Lithuania

Antanas Sutkus is one of the most expressive photographers today. He was the founder of the photography school in Lithuania, thus giving a big boost to this activity in all the Baltic countries. In 1969, under his initiative, the Society for the Art of Photography was founded in Vilnius, which brought together all talented Lithuanian photographers who had the same aspirations. During the Soviet period, most of his photographic production soon went into the archives, without even being shown to the public. His photographs showed people’s daily lives and could not be approved by the ideological censorship in force at that time in the Soviet Union. However, some photographs that reached other countries attracted great interest and, in 1976, Antanas Sutkus was awarded a prize from the International Association of Artistic Photography, an institution of which he is still a member. Since 1996, he has been the president of the Lithuanian Association of Photographers. Exhibitions around the world are dedicated to his work and his photos are represented in several prestigious museums, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Musée de la Photographie Nicéphore Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône), Museum of Photography (Helsinki) and Art Institute (Chicago). Unpublished photographs of the photographer will be presented at the exhibition.