Marathon in the university street (1959)

Marathon in the university street (1959)
Photographer: Antanas Sutkus (Lithuania)


Antanas Sutkus (born 27 June 1939 in Kluoniškiai, Kaunas district) is a renowned Lithuanian photographer and recipient of the Lithuanian National Prize and Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas. He was one of the co-founders and a President of the Photography Art Society of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos fotografijos meno draugija).
Sutkus's series People of Lithuania is considered one of his most important works. It is a continuing project 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 focused 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.(Wikipedia)


“There are images and there are counter-images. A counter-image is produced as an act of resistance against a dominant, official and public image. The vast archive of 700,000 photos by Antanas Sutkus, collected between 1956 and 1989 on the daily life of the communist Lithuania, is one of the most important archives of counter-images ever produced in the world. Each photo of Sutkus, to paraphrase Orwell, is “a pinch of a counter-revolution”, an act of opposition against the visual ideology of the regime.”

-Ben Lewis’ foreword in the catalog of Sutkus’ exhibition in the Château d’Eau Gallery of Paris, March 2011