Antanas Sutkus: planet lithuania

Description

This book is a rich overview of Antanas Sutkus' photos of the people of his native Lithuania during its occupation by the Soviet Union. Sutkus is above all a humanist photographer, his "kosmos" his fellow citizens-children, lovers, the elderly; how they engage with modernity and tradition, nature and the city, and express their identities-all captured in a frank, empathetic style that is far removed from soviet ideals and forms the foundation of the Lithuanian school of photo graphy. By revealing individual lives of dignity and integrity behind the Iron Curtain, Sutkus' work is as political as it is personal, a record of Lithuania's assertion of its cultural self against the Soviet Union which occupied the country from the Second World War until 1990. That struggle has since come to fruition: in 2004 Lithuania became a member of both NATO and the European Union, and is today one of Europe's fasting growing economies.

Planet Lithuania demonstrates the full extent of his artistry, revealing a penetrative yet sensitive gaze to rival that of his significantly more celebrated contemporaries.--Rosie Torres "Independent Photographer" In spite of this seclusion, Sutkus's work is anything but primitive. The sophistication of this largely self-taught artist is all the more remarkable because it grew primarily from his intuition, grounded in his strong feelings of closeness and empathy for the people and situations he photographed.--Carole Naggar "New York Review of Books"