Meistras ir Tatjana

Some called him a madman, others - a genius. Because he kept a live lion in his apartment. Because he was the first to go beyond Lithuanian surroundings and document the spontaneous reality of Soviet Republics. He worked a lot and drank a lot. He lived in Vilnius with his beautiful wife Tatyana. They were the vibrant couple of the '60s. Just as vibrant was their home, always full of people, wine, nightlong conversations, guests from the farthermost places of the Soviet Union. He was engulfed by his passion for truth and photography.
　　The Lithuanian photographer Vitus Luckus (1943-1987) is considered one the most influential artists of his time by his contemporaries, but he barely received any recognition during his lifetime. The Soviet authorities stood in the way of his exhibitions, even though he was the most successful commercial photographer in the country. And when he jumped to his death from his Vilnius apartment at the age of 43, he disappeared into oblivion. It wasn’t until after Lithuanian independence in 1990 that his photos, mostly taken during his long journeys to all corners of the Soviet Union, were publicly exhibited. With a vast amount of archive material, fellow photographers, friends and his wife Tatyana look back on his tumultuous life. They share nostalgic memories of the long days and nights in Luckus’s apartment in Vilnius, where he lived with Tatyana and their lion cub and received artists from all over Lithuania. They fondly describe his kind nature. “An innocent, honest child,” they call him, someone who was always there for his friends and lived for his art, devoted and uncompromising in his search for the truth.