Vytautas Stanionis

Who was Vytautas Stanionis?

Vytautas Stanionis was a Lithuanian photographer of Lithuania and Ukraine during the Soviet period.

Born in Drisa on 27 February 1917, Stanionis was brought up in Kaunas. His mother died when he was young; his father then remarried but he too died when the son was only 16. Stanionis trained and worked as an accountant. He moved to Vilnius in 1940, but three years later became ill and was hospitalized for tuberculosis in Alytus. Stanionis married soon after the war, both working as an accountant and being treated in the hospital, and taking photographs in his spare time.

When in 1946 the new internal Soviet passports required photographs of their bearers, Stanionis was authorized to take them. A white sheet was a sufficient backdrop, and Stanionis would often photograph two people together in order to reduce costs. A number of these photographs survive. Stanionis would also take any other photographs on demand; some survive of Lithuanian partisans. In 1947 he got a job in a regional newspaper, and was a popular photographer, although his work was hindered by his poor health. Photographs recently exhibited and republished show people more or less stiffly standing or sitting for photographs they had requested, plus Soviet rallies and rituals, the river Nemunas, and people unselfconsciously going about their business.