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

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...

. 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

Vilnius

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

 in 1940, but three years later became ill and was hospitalized for tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 in Alytus

Alytus

Alytus is a city with municipal rights in southern Lithuania. It is the capital of Alytus County. Its population in 2007 was 68,835. Alytus is the historical centre of the Dzūkija region. The city lies on the banks of the Nemunas River. The major highways linking Vilnius, Kaunas, Lazdijai, and...

. 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 (uncut) 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 (some with floats eerily reminiscent of demonstrations of US civic pride), the river Nemunas

Neman River

Neman or Niemen or Nemunas, is a major Eastern European river rising in Belarus and flowing through Lithuania before draining into the Curonian Lagoon and then into the Baltic Sea at Klaipėda. It is the northern border between Lithuania and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast in its lower reaches...

 (particularly in flood), and people unselfconsciously going about their business.

The strain worsened Stanionis’s health, and he went briefly to the Crimea

Crimea

Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...

 in the hope of recuperating. His health soon deteriorated again after his return to Alytus, and in 1960 he went again to Crimea, this time to the resort of Sosniak

Sosniak

Sośniak is a settlement in the administrative district of Gmina Przodkowo, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately south-west of Przodkowo, north-east of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gdańsk....

. Here he was able to become photographer for the Nikitsky Botanical Garden

Nikitsky Botanical Garden

Nikitsky Botanical Garden is one of the oldest botanical gardens. It is located in Crimea, Ukraine, close to Yalta, by the shores of the Black Sea. It was founded in 1812 and named after the settlement Nikita, Ukraine....

; his botanical work was exhibited in Yalta

Yalta

Yalta is a city in Crimea, southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea.The city is located on the site of an ancient Greek colony, said to have been founded by Greek sailors who were looking for a safe shore on which to land. It is situated on a deep bay facing south towards the Black...

, Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 and Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

.

Stanionis died in Yalta

Yalta

Yalta is a city in Crimea, southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea.The city is located on the site of an ancient Greek colony, said to have been founded by Greek sailors who were looking for a safe shore on which to land. It is situated on a deep bay facing south towards the Black...

on 11 May 1966.

Stanionis’s elder son, Vytautas V. Stanionis, would later become a professional photographer and the editor of his father’s work.

External links

“Dvigubi portretai, 1946 - 2005. Vytautas Stanionis, Vyresnysis”

• Alis Balbierius. “Balys Buračas and Vytautas Stanionis in Germany”