Biography
Joseph Sudek trained as a bookbinder (his younger sister went into photography) but had a become a keen amateur photographer before being called into military service in the First World War in 1915. He produced several albums of pictures - including landscapes showing splintered trees and other war damage - during his almost three years of war service, which ended when he was wounded by artillery fire from his own side during an attack, resulting in the loss of his right arm.
While staying in a veteran's hostel, he continued to walk and photograph the countryside, and through this he was introduced to another photographer of the same age, Jaromir Funke (1896-1945), who was to become a close friend. As Sudek could no longer bind books, he decided to retrain as a photographer, managing to get a free scholarship to the State School of Graphic Arts where he studied with Karel Novak. Novak introduced his students to the work of Edward Weston, 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 his early work. However, along with Funke and the other young Czech modernists with whom he founded the Czech Photographic Society in 1924, Sudek was soon to renounce such 'artistic' effects, becoming a part of the 'new wave' of modern photography in Europe.
The fascination with light and mood was however to permeate his lifetime's work, with brilliant shafts of sunlight penetrating the dusty gloom of St Vitus Cathedral (his use of light in these interiors reminiscent of the great master of the platinum print, Frederick Evans). A later series of work concentrated on views through the windows of his studio, the glass misted up by condensation or frost, giving a view to a magic world outside through this glowing barrier. His simple still life work, often using fine glassware and ceramics produced by other members of the flourishing Prague artists' cooperative as well as simple elements such as water, bread and eggs, also shows superb use of natural lighting.
Commercially, Sudek was a great success, working as house photographer for the influential magazine produced by the Prague artists, as well as in advertising and other projects. He was also exhibiting his personal work both in Czechoslovakia and internationally, and was a leading figure in the Czech cultural scene.
The Nazi invasion in 1939 led Sudek to withdraw very much into himself. Coming across an old photograph, he was gripped by the quality which it had because it was a contact print. He started intensive experiments in printmaking which was to be an important aspect of this work from this time on, concentrating on the use of very dark (and often low contrast) images, sometimes on toned paper and at times using non-silver processes. After this date, almost his entire work - commercial and personal - was contact printed, from negatives on a wide range of mainly elderly cameras.
Sudek's pictures often play on the lower tones of the photographic scale, full of mystery and darkness. He was not afraid to produce prints with a very limited tonal scale. His small, unorthodox and intensely personal pictures were often dismissed by photographic critics attuned as they were to the kind of full-scale print we associate with the work of Ansel Adams and the American 'straight photography' tradition. His work has an earthy and elemental quality; it is intense and dramatic, full of emotion. It reflects a preoccupation which has a uniquely Central European origin, and which was also the seed bed for Freud and Kafka.
Although his first panoramic picture was made during his was service around 1916, it was around 1950 that he started to work seriously in this area, mainly with an 1899 Kodak Panoram panoramic camera, which produced prints that were 10 cm by 30 cm (about 4" x 12"). Perhaps his finest book, Panoramas of Prague, (1959) contained almost 300 panoramas from Prague and the surrounding area. Like most of his books it was published only in his native country.
Sudek's individualism did not fit in with the new post-war Czech Socialist Republic, but fortunately the strong artistic tradition of the country meant that there were many mavericks in the establishment who supported his work, and it continued to be published. Finally he was to become the first photographer to be honoured by the Republic with the title of 'Artist of Merit' and in his 70th year, his life's work was recognized by the 'Order of Labour'. He died, still keen to do more work, at the age of 80 in 1976.
At the end of the war, Sudek had been joined in his studio by a young Czech Jew who had survived the Nazi concentration camps and wanted to become a photographer. Sonja Bullaty kept in touch with her old master after she had emigrated to the USA, making a number of visits, and she built up a collection of his prints which were exhibited in the US. The first monograph of his work in the West was produced by Bullaty two years after his death, and contained an introduction by Anna Farova, Sudek's executrix and the great expert on his life; this excellent volume firmly established his reputation as one of the great photographers of the century.
