RTR gallery presents the show « Unpublished » by Antanas Sutkus, a selection of photographs from the 500,000 negatives discovered this year in his archives, that have never been seen or edited.
Two years ago, Antanas Sutkus, the 75 year old Lithuanian photographer, decided to put some order in his archives …he rediscovered negatives from the late 50s to the late 70s, one of the most important periods of his work.
Vintage prints found in his studio, prints from that period and modern prints, RTR gallery offers this selection of 35 ” Unpublished ” photographs, new images from one of the most important photographers of the XX century.
“I started taking pictures at the age of 13. When I put the paper in the developer for the first time, I saw a face appearing and I felt I was God ,” says Antanas Sutkus . Bringing out these images from the depths of his filed negatives, the photographer brings back to life the subjects that he loved so much and captured in time with his camera.
“Thus the aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry” said Victor Hugo. In the images of Antanas Sutkus , history and poetry merge into a unique and single picture. Sutkus recounts with an unusual non- conformism the life of his people, which was dangerous at the time.
The exhibition « Unpublished » shows very typical Sutkus images, but also some more unusual images, such as “The Beggar ” from 1961 which sends us back to the canons of Russian painting from the 1870s, as well as to picturalist photography, with, in Sutkus’s case , a more intense and darker palette, radically dense.
A very personal theme, a recurring subject in Sutkus’s work is Woman. He found in his archives a whole gallery of portraits of women where she is seductive, beautiful, attractive, impossible to ignore…. ” I did not photograph the ugly ones,” admits Sutkus. And it’s quite representative in the pictures, where young women, with short skirts, long legs, walk proudly in the streets, read on university benches , tan on the stadium stands. Sutkus catches them either from a distance, with this Rodchenko composition, where bodies are melted into the geometry of the rows, or close-up, where girls seem to melt and bloom under the sun and under the photographer lens, with complicity.
” In order to photograph people, you must love them. I stopped taking pictures as soon as I stopped loving people, when capitalism had arrived in this country, after the liberation of Lithuania from the Soviet invasion in 1991. Besides, we spoke, at the time of USSR, of creating socialism with a human face. Today, it would be wise to try to build capitalism with a human face. “
The Unpublished
Antanas Sutkus
From December 6th, 2013 to February 26th, 2014
RTR Gallery
42 rue Volta
75003 Paris
France
Open from Tuesday to Saturday 2 pm – 7 pm
or by appointment
+33 9 83 72 04 60
[email protected]
http://rtrgallery.com
