Children

Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus’ favorite motif: children and their world

Childhood is a theme that Sutkus (born 1939) has returned to again and again, presenting its myriad facets as well as the many interactions between the lives of children and adults. “Childhood is the most important platform for me as a photographer,” says Sutkus; “Children live in a different world. Sometimes I succeeded in showing that world: not the real world customary to us, but their world. Children live on another planet than earth.”

With an unfailingly respectful yet astute eye, Sutkus depicts children together with their parents and relatives, with their friends, at play or hard at work in school. He captures not merely the pleasures of childhood but also its deprivations, the difficulties involved in raising children, loneliness alongside belonging, as well as the inevitable crises of childhood that can have a lifelong impact. For Sutkus, children occupy a life phase that transcends national and cultural borders.