Since joining the EU in 2004, Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, has emerged as a new focus for art and photography, particularly for work by Antanas Sutkus. “The father of Baltic photography”, Sutkus built his reputation on a documentary archive of life under Soviet rule during the Sixties and Seventies. Most subjects are Lithuanians but this small yet wonderful exhibition also includes, surprisingly, shots of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir on a local beach in 1965.

Sutkus’s intense documentary portraits, taken always in black and white, freeze the small moments of life. Unlike his Ukrainian contemporary Boris Mikhailov, who highlighted the wretchedness of the era, Sutkus made “humanistic” and “psychological” portraits, and sought out the positive amid the harsh reality. He found joy in a beaming young soldier but never the sentimentality demanded of official Soviet photographers.

Sutkus’s popularity derives largely from the intense sensitivity he shows towards children. Sometimes he approaches sentimentality but always elegantly avoids it — even in the heart-rending Mother’s Hand, a perfectly composed masterpiece that leads the eye around the girl towards her face and downcast eyes, stopping on the hands clinging to her mother’s fingers.

Sutkus always printed his own work, and characteristically chose a soft, grainy effect to avoid the cooler, sharp-contrast style of many documentary photographers. This important historical record places White Space firmly on the map.

Until 10 October. Information: 020 7399 9571, www.whitespacegallery.