Antanas Sutkus

Antanas Sutkus (born 27 June 1939) is a Lithuanian photographer. He is a recipient of the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts and Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas. Sutkus was one of the co-founders and a president of the Lithuanian Association of Art Photographers (Lithuanian: Lietuvos fotografijos meno draugija).

Sutkus was born on 27 June 1939 in Kluoniškiai, Kaunas district, Lithuania.

He "studied journalism at Vilnius University in the late 1950s before becoming disillusioned by the confines of the Soviet-controlled press. He began taking photographs instead, and soon co-founded the Lithuanian Association of Art Photographers."

He is best known for his life-long survey, People of Lithuania, begun in 1976 to document the changing life and people of Lithuania. Working at the time when Lithuania (as the Lithuanian SSR) was part of the Soviet Union, 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.

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.

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