UNTITLED (Lithuania, 1959-1999)

When he was still very young, the Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus became acquainted with the cruelty of the communist system. His father committed suicide, his mother fled to the West and left him behind with his grandparents. Nevertheless, as a ‘soviet photographer’ he had to focus on the sunny life that supposedly was the creation of the communist state. He got around this rule by doing much of his photography in the countryside, where there was less surveillance. The putative allegiance of Lithuania to the Soviet Union also permitted extra latitude, allowing Sutkus to document everyday life in Lithuania, which was anything but sunny. He was also wise enough to never publish or show this work, such as a report on a school for blind children. When his photograph ‘Pioneer’ won an important Western prize in 1970, complaints to the Central Committee termed him the ‘photographing Solzhenitsyn’. Although this title was not without its dangers, Sutkus rapidly became the most famous photographer in his country.