Josef Sudek

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Josef Sudek (March 17, 1896, Kolin, Bohemia – September 15, 1976, Prague, Czechoslovakia) was a Czech photographer dubbed the "Poet of Prague". Born when Bohemia was a kingdom in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he learned bookbinding but after his 1916 First World War injury, which led to the amputation of his right arm, he took up photographing. He studied photography for two years in Prague and lived on military disability pension combined with income from his art. In the 1920s he embraced the Romantic Pictorialist style but after an argument about the need to move forward from 'painterly' photography, he was expelled from a local camera club. His response to this was the founding of the progressive Czech Photographic Society in 1924 as a platform for progressive ideas. The inability to accept the norm and prescribed limits of an artistic style and form remained with him throughout his life. Perhaps because of his disability, he never married and was very shy. Thus, photography was a form of redemption, as it allowed him to peek beyond the life of loneliness into the lives of fellow humans and their environment. Few people appear in his photographs, and melancholy is the signature on all. He labored hard to make up for his disability and was very patient, driven by the strife for perfection. He always used large bulky cameras and had to rely on the aid of assistants. His style exhibits traits of Impressionism, Surrealism, Magic Realism, Neo-Romanticism, Avantgarde, and Czech Poetism Movement, but central to his art is a diversity of light values in the low end of the tonal scale, and the representation of light as a substance occupying its own space. His work first appeared in America in 1974 at the George Eastman House. Towards the end of his life he was branded a loner and eccentric; classical music and his famous painter and poet friends kept him company. He experienced several political regimes, yet he always managed to maintain his own perspective of art, oblivious to artistic movements and doctrines. He never sought the limelight and mostly busied himself with what captured his interest. He published 16 books during his life and left behind over 20,000 photographs and twice as many negatives, of which most have not been published.

Life

Sudek's father, a house painter, apprenticed his son to a bookbinder; a fellow worker introduced the young man to photography. The father died soon afterward but Josef's memories of childhood were fond despite family poverty. He felt very close to his sister Božena, who helped him with household chores even through his adulthood. He was drafted into the Hungarian Army in 1915 and served on the Italian Front until he was wounded in the right arm. Infection set in and his arm had to be removed at the shoulder. During his three-year convalescence in Prague's veterans hospital, he was photographing his fellow inmates; it was there that he first began photographing in earnest. He produced several albums of pictures, including landscapes showing splintered trees and other war damage.

After his discharge, he settled in Prague and took photographs on commission. He joined the Amateur Photography Club and struck up a friendship with Czech Avant-Garde photographer Jaromir Funke. In 1922, Sudek enrolled in the School of Graphic Arts in Prague in a quest for formal education in the art of photography. Major "old school" Czech photographers were among his teachers, such as Karel Novak, who introduced his students to the most influential American photographer of the 20th century, Edward Weston, and his soft-focus Pictorialism. But it was the pictures of Clarence White, with his use of a soft-focus lens to produce diffused highlights and a mood of Romanticism, that were a more immediate influence on Sudek's early work. Along with the other leading young photographers he quickly became absorbed in the modernist approach and co-founded clubs that rejected the traditional school of photography, such as Photoclub Prague and the Czech Photographic Society.

However, along with Funke and the other young Czech modernists, he was soon to renounce such ‘painterly affectations’ and 'artistic' effects in favor of the 'new wave' of modern photography in Europe, although the fascination with light and mood would continue to permeate his work. For this, Funke and Sudek were expelled from the Photography Club. The two upstarts gathered other like-minded photographers and formed the Avant-Garde Czech Photographic Society in 1924, devoted to the integrity of the negative and freedom from the painters' tradition. Funke was the same age as Sudek but had already studied law, medicine and philosophy, and Sudek admired his friend's superior education and intellectual capacities. Their discussions often led to ambitious projects.

Sudek soon became commercially successful working for an influential magazine produced by Prague artists as well as in advertising. He was one of the leaders in Czech artistic circles. In 1933 he held his first show.

The Nazi invasion of 1939 brought much of the cultural life of Prague to a halt; forced in on himself, Sudek brooded over his work and became captivated by the quality obtainable from contact prints. From this time on he hardly ever enlarged a negative. He also began a great deal of experimentation with printing papers and effects, concentrating on the use of very dark (and often low contrast) images, sometimes on toned paper and at times using non-silver processes, creating a very different style of printing to that advanced in America by 'straight photographers' such as Ansel Adams. From that time on, almost his entire work—commercial and personal—was contact printed from negatives on a wide range of cameras. Sudek's work was often dark and moody; he was not afraid to make use of some very limited tonalities. Sudek’s small, unorthodox and intensely personal pictures were often dismissed by critics for their deviation from 'straight photography'. His work has an earthy and elemental quality; it is intense and dramatic, full of emotion. It reflects a preoccupation of the Central European origin, also traceable in Freud and Kafka.

After WWII, he hired an assistant, Sonja Bullaty, a young Czech Jew who survived the Nazi concentration camps and wanted to become a photographer. She struggled to keep pace with her dynamic boss, still reeling from the trauma of the War, but over a thirty year period following her emigration to America, Sudek sent her more than 300 selections of his prints. It was Bullaty who opened his work to the world outside the Iron Curtain.

In the early 1950's, he acquired an 1894 Kodak Panorama camera whose spring-drive sweeping lens makes a negative 10 cm x 30 cm, and employed this exotic format to make a stunning series of cityscapes of Prague, published in 1959. He started to occupy himself fully in the area of prints. Two main subjects occupied his attention: his former fellow patients, the invalids in the veterans hospital, and the ongoing reconstruction of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Perhaps his finest book, Panoramas of Prague, (1959) contained almost 300 panoramas of Prague and the surroundings. Like most of his books, it was only published in his native country.

Sudek's individualism did not fare well with Czechoslovakia’s communist regime. Fortunately, the strong artistic tradition of the country made it possible for him to practice his art through mavericks who supported his work, and it continued to be published. He was the first photographer to be honored by the country with the title of 'Artist of Merit'. He died, still keen to do more work, at the age of 80. His hunched figure supporting a huge wooden tripod was a familiar sight in Prague.

Attempt to Reunite with his Arm

In 1926, Sudek ventured back into Italy with a group of friends that brought him near the spot where his life had been shattered nearly ten years earlier. Leaving his friends in the middle of the concert and wandering somnabulent until he reaches the place, he stays put for two months. His friends even alerted police when they could not account for him. Finally, having reached the catarsis but permanently estranged, he returns to Prague, where he immerses himself in his art.

Bullaty reproduced Sudek's description of his odyssey as follows: "…until we came to that place – I had to disappear in the middle of the concert; in the dark I got lost, but I had to search. Far outside the city toward dawn, in the fields bathed by the morning dew, finally I found the place. But my arm wasn't there – only the poor peasant farmhouse was still standing in its place. They had brought me into it that day when I was shot in the right arm. They could never put it together again, and for years I was going from hospital to hospital, and had to give up my bookbinding trade. The Philharmonic people… didn't reproach me, but from that time on, I never went anywhere, anymore, and I never will. What would I be looking for when I didn't find what I wanted to find?"[1]


Sudek as a Person

  • He never came to his own openings. He only made one exception, in the town of Roudnice, since he wanted to see how the photos were hung. After surveying the display and expressing approval, he retired to an upper floor to watch from above.
  • Later in life, he developed a close relationship with Dr. Peter Helbich. Sudek called him "student" and the doctor called him "chief". Helbich once noted that after Sudek lost his arm, he felt estranged from the rest of humanity, and his photography is a means to bridge the gap. "That is the reason for the melancholy in his photographs," said Helbich, adding that had Sudek not lost his arm, he would not have become the artist he was."[2]
  • Sudek loved music, especially the Czech composer Leos Janacek (1854-1928). For years he would visit Janacek's native Hukvaldy in the eastern region of the Czech Republic Moravia to capture both the unique charm of the area and the composer's character through photographs of the countryside, the town, and the composer's home. He held weekly classical music soirees for his friends, drawing on his vast record collection.
  • He openly admitted his weaknesses, such as reluctance to read, sloppiness, inability to bring a project to an end, and hoardiness.
  • He said on the relationship between the artist and environment: „… the environment does have an impact on the person; even if you curse it, it will affect you. You can't extricate yourself from it."[3]

Style

Cezanne, Atget, and Flaubert

Sudek's approach to art is reminiscent of that of Cezanne and his systematic approach and the dogged aesthetic experimentation. Sudek worked hard both in terms of technique and aestheticism; his panoramic photos are of extreme proportions of 1 x 3 meter, and the distortions caused by the sweeping lens are extremely demanding. His persistence, patience and continuous investment paid off and yielded unique results in the hands of the maestro. Also, he continuously explored and pushed beyond the boundaries of possibilities of his antique camera. Seen through its lens, countryside took on geodesic dimensions instead of appearing as isolated views, the Vltava River became an integral part of Prague, and the city’s labyrinthine quality was offset by its broad open spaces. When photographing historic buildings, public squares and churches, he focused on architectural details, shooting from a variety of angles. The result was a series of distinctive perspectives.

Like Eugene Atget, his counterpart in France, Sudek was devoted to the task of portraying a city, and Prague's Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture offers aplenty. He delved into the essence of the city, but unlike Atget, who depicted the sociological realities of the city, Sudek’s mysterious photographs render explorations of his soul. He believed that symbolic form equates with inner emotions, a philosophy shared by many painters of his era.

Flaubert once expressed an ambition to write a book which would have no subject, "a book dependent on nothing external ... held together by the strength of its style. Sudek called him "student" and the doctor called him "chief".[4] Photographers strove to achieve this by making light the subject of their photographs, leaving the trite, material world behind. Sudek, with his employment of dust raised in a frenzy when the light was just right, a gossamer curtain draped over the back of the chair, the mist from a garden sprinkler, even the ambient moisture in the atmosphere when the air is near dew point, has come closer than any other photographer to capturing this illusive goal. He looked for such materials everywhere. Once, accompanied by Bullaty, he saw a ray of sun enter the darkness of the Romanesque halls below the spires of St. Vitus Cathedral and started waving cloths to raise mountains of dust 'to see the light'[5]. This is an Impressionist sensibility.

Czech Poetism Movement

The ubiquitous melancholy and detachment with which the pictures were taken underscores tranquility on one hand and belittles human intimacy on the other. This style of enigmatic reality, the excursions into the the realm of imagination, correlated more to Surrealist and Magic Realism paintings than to the popular photographic styles of the age. It also reflects the Czech Poetism movement of the 1920s, which never spread beyond the boundaries of the country. It aimed to show an optimistic view of the world stripped of politics by building on lyricism and playfulness. The only permitted time frame was the present – its joyful moments imbued with happiness and emotions. Philosophically, it was a reaction to the feeling of alienation widespread in Europe of that time. The Czech artists were convinced that human relations had been warped, which they attributed to the society, blinded by its own system and complexity. As a result, society did not show interest in the happiness of an individual and was self-centered. Poetism strove to rectify and overcome this feeling of alienation.

Nevertheless, Sudek remained faithful to his own stylistic and emotional proclivities. Being a loner, he shot a large portion of his photographs from the vantage point of his studio window in Prague. The window acted as a reflective backdrop, framing artfully arranged objects such as onions, pebbles or flowers. Those were his homages to the carefully arranged still lifes of Chardin and old Dutch masters. He often shot the window through a curtain of dew, ice or rain drops, a distorting barrier between internal and external worlds. In "The Window of My Studio", for example, a barely distinguishable figure is seen through a dusky veil of rainy condensation.

Artistic Evolution

His photos from 1920 until the year of his crisis (1926) are a stunning contrast both in style and content from the work that followed. In the series from the veterans hospital, the invalids are portrayed as ghostly silhouettes shrouded in clouds of light – lost souls suspended in limbo. The photos of Sunday pleasure-seekers in his native Kolin from the same period show the people from a distance, through soft focus, in social clusters, usually with their backs to the camera, as if their lives were not to be revealed to outsiders. And then came four years of a rapid artistic development and later on healing of the soul, through his study of the reconstruction of St. Vitus Cathedral, completed in 1928.

After 1926, gone is the haze of soft focus, and gone too, are the people – even most of his cityscapes show deserted streets. The photographer withdrew into himself and turned his attention to Prague with devotion and dedication that are rare even among the most committed artists; yet, through his lens it is empty. As if to compensate for the absence of the human factor, he personified the inanimate and populated the woods of Bohemia and Moravia with "sleeping giants", as he called them – giant dead trees that watched over the landscape. In playful moments he toyed with masks and statuary heads, showing them as lovers, grotesqueries, or even gods, unable to convey the intimacy that was missing in his life. "I like to tell stories about the life of inanimate objects," he told one interviewer.[6] He devoted endless hours to photographing objects in various settings, particularly objects given to him by friends. To him, the photos were "remembrances" of the person.

As he came to his artistic maturity, immersion in work and devotion to a high standard of craftsmanship became the dominant motifs. In 1940, he saw a 30 x 40 cm photograph of a statue from Chartres, France, which was not an enlargement but one made by the contact process. The print impressed him so much for its rendering of the stone material that he vowed to make only contact prints ever after. He said it was the tonal variation of details rather than the fineness he craved in contact prints. From then on he lugged view cameras as large as the 30 x 40 cm format (12 x 16 inches) around the streets of Prague, working with one hand, cradling the camera in his lap to make adjustments, using his teeth when his hand was insufficient.

Promotional and Publicity Photography

In 1930s, Sudek worked mostly as a photographer on commission. He was described as a very expensive, goal-oriented businessman who did not hesitate to hire an attorney when his royalties were not paid or when the buyers defaulted. Later in his life he played down this chapter of his life, admitting that money was good but doing just that would drive him insane. He was eager to quickly return to his art once the commercial order was completed. He never loosen his standards though, pioneering this field in his country. He worked for the Družstevní práce publishing house and its promotional publications focused on quality work, living style and modern life, briefly sitting on the editorial board. Then he took on orders to photograph Prague's factories and businesses and various products.

Selected Works

http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011000b.htm

Sudek in Dates

  • 1896 - born in Kolin.
  • 1908 - begins studies at the Royal Bohemian Trade School in Kutna Hora.
  • 1911 - moves to Prague to work as a bookbinder's apprentice. Begins taking photos.
  • 1915-1916 - fights in and takes photographs on the Italian front of WWI. Loses his right arm.
  • 1917 - unable to continue bookbinding, he concentrates on photography.
  • 1920-1921 - becomes member of the Prague Society of Amateur Photographers.
  • 1922-1924 - studies photography at Prague Graphic Arts School.
  • 1922-1927 - takes photographs of veterans at Prague's Invalidovna hospital.
  • 1924 - co-founds the Prague Photographic Society.
  • 1926 - travels to Italy.
  • 1928 - documents the reconstruction of St. Vitus Cathedral and publishes his first album of ten photographs for the 10th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia.
  • 1927-1936 - Works for Druzstevni prace, specializing in portraits, ads, and documentaries.
  • 1932 - first exhibition in Prague.
  • 1940 - stops enlarging negatives and focuses on contact prints.
  • 1958 - moves to a new studio in Uvoz near Prague.
  • 1961 - receives the Artist of Merit award by the Czech government as the first photographer ever.
  • 1966 - awarded the Order of Labor by the Czech government.
  • 1976 - dies in Prague.

Notes

  1. ↑ April 1980, "Josef Sudek" Creative Camera, Josef Sudek
  2. ↑ April 1980, "Josef Sudek" Creative Camera, Josef Sudek
  3. ↑ 2001, "Josef Sudek on Himself" Non-Commercial Projects Website, [1]
  4. ↑ April 1980, "Josef Sudek" Creative Camera, Josef Sudek
  5. ↑ April 1980, "Josef Sudek" Creative Camera, Josef Sudek
  6. ↑ April 1980, "Josef Sudek" Creative Camera, Josef Sudek

External links

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Czech Language


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