here are artists that we cannot understand unless we know the places in which they’ve worked. Considered one of the most important living artists on the world scene, the Czechoslovakian photographer Jan Saudek hasn’t been undermined by evil regimes, sixties and eighties spring repressions, institutional ostracism: he never moved from Prague, mysterious and magic city that retains the extreme charm of history, where he was born in 1935 and with whom is bound by an obvious link. During the years of the regime, he works in numerous factories (he does it for 32 years, till 1984, when the Communist government grant him a permit so that, free from the constraints of weekly wage, he can devote all his skills and his time to photography) and during leisure time he cultivates his passion for art and photography.
Still unknown as an artist, he is forced to work in a cellar to avoid police surveillance, using as a backdrop a wall peeling from moisture, perfect for the nuances and shades of gray it returns to his photos creating incredible stories. His first photographs are printed in black and white or sepia toned. In the mid-seventies, under pressure from its customers, he decides to watercolor his prints, creating a particular and recognizable style. His images explore dreams more that reality, although strongly characterized by the personality of the subject portrayed and by the manual staining that produces by itself a dreaming and unrealistic effect, even if Saudek’s choice was dictated by the accidental difficulty of finding color films and developments.
The atmosphere is suspended between dream and nightmare, oniric, and our thoughts go to Kafka’s Process. Saudek’s stories talk about love and sex, erotic fantasies and perversions, beautiful and decadent bodies, in a continuous carousel of human types on the edge of reality. It’s a gallery that, in colors, recalls the morbidity of the cellar, reminiscent of the refined perverse pathology of Joel Peter Witkin. Just like in a dreaming circus, Saudek’s photos are performances he plays to tell his truth and to make it timeless, and Prague itself is a huge magnificent natural scenery. Self-taught, visionary painter of dreams, he won moral norms and society rules to exasperate his passion.
Trought photography he has been able to express his indignation, his desires, his delusions, it’s a cry of sex, mind and heart. What interests Saudek, as author, director, makeup artist and set designer at times, is the human being and his relationship; he says: “my real activity is portraying the souls”. With humor, irony, kitsch and the strength of desire that is always renewed, he establishes a vision characterized by both its fervor and its beauty and consistency. Obsessed with time, aging, loss of beauty, the theme of Vanitas returns insistently. Brilliant, impulsive, excessive, has infused his soul into his works that express the impossibility of happiness.
Underground creator for a long time condemned to marginality, today Saudek has its full place in the history of photography. He exclusively works with analog cameras and photo-techniques that many today consider anachronistic, out of time. His models are, in general, friends and acquaintances, such as the artist Sára Saudková, his partner often photographed with her friend Olga. In Saudek’s photos appares just one man, Saudek himself: he says it’s not narcissism but the easier choise, because when men have to pose naked they are always uneasy and embarrassed. In an interview to mark the publication of one of his books, he says: “If a photograpy does not tell a story it’s not a photography. Perhaps it’s the story of all of our thoughts, those that become public and challenge conventional wisdom and those who remain confined by shame “.
