THE MOST SIGNIFICANT INFLUENCES ON MY APPROACH TO PHOTOGRAPHY

By Karolis Salkauskas
06 04 2017

The first and the most significant influence on my approach to photography was made by a local
photographer and my first teacher in photography Gvidas Taurosevicius. He owns a studio and a digital
photo-laboratory in my city Siauliai. He is not a famous photographer, but everyone in our city knows
him and only a few calls him using his name, others just say Photographer. He was the one, who
brought me to this exciting art. He gave me the first and the most significant understanding about
photography, its technology. He taught me about cameras, optical devices, exposure, lighting... He
taught me how to work in the studio, deal with people, models, work with light, composition, retouch,
black and white images as well as with colours, how to print photos... Ive spent numerous days in his
studio and photo laboratory. I am very thankful to Gvidas Taurosevicius that I can understand the
beauty and attraction of the art of photography. Here I present some of his photograps.

I also feel myself influenced by a famous Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus. He says:
One has to love people in order to take pictures of them." Antanas Sutkus, born in 1939, studied
journalism at Vilnius University in the late 1950s before becoming disillusioned by the confines of the
Soviet-controlled press. He began taking photographs and co-founded the Lithuanian Association of Art
Photographers. One of many things I mostly admire about A. Sutkus is how he focuses on ordinary
people living their everyday lives, rather than the model citizens promoted by Soviet propaganda. He
often photographed children and young people, and is best known for his life-long survey People of
Lithuania. A. Sutkus drew inspiration from the works of Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest
Hemingway and Vladimir Nabokov. The most of A. Sutkuss images were taken during the 1960s and
1970s reflecting the aspects of the countrys poverty endured during that period of troubled relationship
with Soviet ruling. Margarita Matulyte, the art critic from Lithuania, has described Sutkuss work as an
epic poem, assembled from fragments of everyday life. I am impressed by the artists ability to look
inside people through his camera, which is obvious in such images as Blind Pioneer, 1962, Village Street,
Dzukija, 1969, Fathers Bicycle, 1969, Bikers 1974, Cavaliers in Salakas, 1979, etc.

The influence of Edward Steichen, the major contributor to the development of fine art
photography, photographer, painter, art gallery and museum curator, on my approach to photography
is great. He was one of the most influential modern artists both as a practitioner and promoter of lens-
based art. A founder member of the Photo-Secession in 1902, he soon became known for his of
celebrities, such as J.P. Morgan (1903), and for his highly innovative print The Pond - Moonlight (1904).
In 1905, together with Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) he established the "Little Galleries of the Photo-
Secession". The address on the Fifth Avenue in New York influenced that the gallery of modern art
became known as "291". In addition to the promoting of the photographic art, "291" also included
impressionism and avant-garde art mostly by famous French painters. This was resulted by Steichen's
move to Paris (1906-14), where he met lots of the leading artists of that time, and Stieglitz then
arranged their exhibitions at "291". The masterpieces of such painters as Paul Cezanne (1839-1906),
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Francis
Picabia (1879-1953), and Gino Severini (1883-1976); and sculptors such as Constantin Brancusi (1876-
1957) were exhibited there. Soon Steichen became one of the world's first fashion photographers. The
magazine "Art and Decoration" published his photos of gowns designed by couturier Paul Poiret.
Steichens Pictorialism expanded my outlook and I tried to implement some of the ideas using modern
editing programs. However, as a result of his experience in battlefield imagery in the World War I,
Steichen switched to realistic photography and became the highest paid commercial photographer in
the world. During World War II, he directed an award-winning documentary The Fighting Lady. Later, he
joined the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. He was a Director of the Department of
Photography, until 1962. While working at MOMA, he curated the ambitious photography exhibition The
Family of Man, where the works of over 500 photographs from around the world were exhibited. It was
seen by 9 million visitors. Steichen contributed significantly to American Art and is one of the most
prominent photographers of the early part of the 20-th century.
Steichens celebrity portraits, twilit woodland scenes and painterly nudes, his city photographs
with astonishingly tall skyscrapers and the branch jutting in from the picture edge recalling Japanese
ukiyo-e prints, which were very much in vogue in turn-of-the-century Paris, are unforgettable.
Steichens iconic photography is certainly modern in its essence. In spite of the fact that he renounced
painting along with the vestiges of Pictorialism and adopted a modernist style, his universality, talents
and special view of the world reflected in all these areas of art serve me as huge inspiration.

Information sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanas_Sutkus
http://photographie.com/node/50680
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3652101/Viewfinder-The-Mothers-Hand-1966-by-Antanas-Sutkus.html
https://www.google.lt/search?q=antanas+sutkus+photography+review&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&sqi
=2&ved=0ahUKEwiVn5Lato_TAhWBaxQKHU5CCEcQsAQIJg&biw=1366&bih=613
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Steichen
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/edward-steichen-in-vogue-125189608/
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stei/hd_stei.htm
https://www.google.lt/search?q=Steichen&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ7Myl3Y_TAhVGEJoKHZ
h9CPkQ_AUIBigB&biw=1366&bih=613