n the history of the world photography significant positions were held first of all by personalities whose work was marked by a characteristic and, moreover, exceptional craftsmanship in its own time. Josef Sudek, who among all Czechoslovak photographers became doubtlessly the best known even beyond the boundaries of his own land, fulfilled these conditions directly in an exemplary manner. The individual character of his pictures was closely connected with his utter faithfulness to his own principles and with an aversion to adapt himself to any foreign models, even if these met with wider acknowledgement. Sudek was free from the desire for great success and perhaps for this reason he could enjoy it to the full. Later on, at the time when he was already famous, he admitted that he had never counted with a wider impact of his pictures which he shaped rigorously in the way which, as he felt, his creative art required. The early beginnings of Josef Sudek‘s work are to be sought among amateur photographers, as was the case of the majority of his contemporaries. The shift towards professional activity had in his case the First World War as its cause. The loss of the right arm as a consequence of a shell fragment wound prevented him from returning to his original employment. To choose photography as his lifelong occupation required, however, that he should extend and deepen his fundamental knowledge and skill. He entered therefore the State School of Graphic Art and attended the department of photography in the years 1922-1924. The head of this department was Professor Karel Novák who was himself a former student and follower of the Viennese school. In his lessons he laid much emphasis on the classical composition of the portrait, which no doubt resulted from the justified assumption that most of the students would have to make portraits of persons to order.
Also Josef Sudek himself, about three years after finishing his studies at this school, owned a wooden studio situated in a small garden in the yard between the houses of the Lesser Town of Prague. The former owner made use of the fact that there were three big military barracks in the immediate neighbourhood and made photographs mainly of soldiers. Matters of financial success, however, always remained strange to Sudek‘s reasoning and he considered his own work to order primarily as a means of making his living. In his own words, immediately after he had earned enough to pay the rent he was no longer to be found at the studio; he went away to pursue his main interest, freely arranged photographs in the exterior. In Sudek‘s early work after World War One till the beginning of the work at his own studio his preference for diffuse illumination made itself markedly felt, softening the contours of the objects in a light haze. The communicating of the atmosphere of streets at dawn revealed already distinctly the sense of poetic vision. Pictures of the Kolín island or of the Prague park Stromovka, in a similar conception, imparted the singular mood of peace and quiet of a festive day.
The completion of St. Vitus‘Cathedral at the PragueCastle became the focus of Sudek‘s interest to such a degree that it became the frequent theme of his photographs in a rather long period between the years 1924 and 1928. A series of pictures as the outcome of this interest became the basis for a portfolio of original photographs issued in a tasteful cover in the overall number of 120 copies by the publishing house „Družstevní práce“ („Cooperative Work“) at the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic. Through this set of photographs of St. Vitus‘ Cathedral Sudek immediately took a high rank among the most significant photographers of Pragensia.
In the following year a monograph on Prague appeared, edited by C. Merhout. In spite of the dominating position of the Prague motifs, Josef Sudek did not neglect in the second half of the twenties and during the thirties the artistically seen portrait either, which, however, had to be cultivated outside the range of common work to order. A number of these portraits were based on Sudek‘s impressions of the leading representatives of Czech culture. Close contacts with the artistic vanguard was also important for Sudek‘s work. They became reflected not only in the mentioned studies but also in the ripening of his entire spiritual background. In this connection his sympathies for progressive orientation cannot be overlooked. Even if Sudek‘s work originated first of all in artistic images and in an endeavour to grasp the poetic features of actual life and as such it was not consciously critical of the contemporary society – his sense of self-identification with the left-minded wing was shown by his participation in the exhibition „Social Photography“ in Prague. The justification of including his pictures was even the more logical, as the originally intended title „Socialist Photography“ was not approved by the autlorities in the first half of the thirties. Sudek‘s photographs meant a great sensitive enrichment of the cultural consciousness and therefore they were even then rightly valued as a considerable asset for the socialist society of the future.
In the circles of the vanguard Sudek most probably became acquainted with some of the assets of surrealism. He himself would have most probably denied any direct relation with this trend, yet the influence as regards a keener sense of the accidental rise of poetry became manifested at a whole range of pictures. Sudek began to apply the principle of „objet trouvé“ („found object“) closely tied-up with surrealism approximately at the beginning of the forties, in some pictures of torso sculptuies and in spontaneously shaped still-lives. Later on he completed a number of arrangements of minor objects in the sense of accidental meetings. Approximately in the fifties surrealist influences became reflected also in several of Sudek‘s photographs of nudes where he confronted the forms of a girl‘s body with forms of quite distant meanings (e. g. with the wings of a Baroque angel or with a shell). In the year 1947 Josef Sudek used an old panoramatic Kodak camera for negatives of the size 10 x 30 cm.
He copied the photographs taken at this atypical format by leaving a naturally formed black frame at the sides, because in this way he achieved an interesting balance of the picture. The relief of the picture against the dark barkground held his attention and he began to take pictures in the usual sizes with the intention to copy them on a larger piece of paper so that the effect of the „black framing“ might be shown. For any professional photographer the methods and purposes of applying his work are important. After World War Two the interest in book publications was on the increase. Thus favourable conditions were formed for the use of Sudek‘s pictures in a number of publications on Prague which established the artist‘s position in the cultural consciousness of the inhabitants of the capital. The public then became even better acquainted with his work through the publication of a picture monograph at the Readers‘ Club in 1956, issued in an unusually high number of 30 000 copies. The 232 pictures reproduced offered a chronological view of Sudek‘s artistic activity, while more than two thirds of the illustrations were devoted to the results achived in the forties and at the beginning of the fifties. Among the latter pictures special attention was focussed particularly on different variations of the picture of the window of his studio which communicated in a masterly way the atmosphere of space in front and behind the window-pane.
Of a no less poetic character were the different kinds of still-life composed of ordinary objects the charm of which was heightened by the sensitively chosen illumination. Book publications had doubtlessly a considerable share in the rise of Sudek‘s popularity but nevertheless the most important part of his work was always represented by original positives. In agreement with his conviction about the independence of the photograph as a work of art the copy which he himself had produced became a logical culmination of his creative endeavours, because as regards the scale of shading and the representation of all details no reproduction in print could aspire to the richness of the original. Sudek indirectly endorsed this attitude by signing his photographs in the same way as it was done by painters with their pictures. The care which he gave to every copy then doubtlessly proved that he shared the opinion that all honest art originates in perfect craftsmanship. Today the originals of Sudek‘s pictures are the pride of every world gallery or museum of photographic art. Sudek‘s preference for the use of cameras of large formats which made it possible to obtain sufficiently extensive contact copies laid great claims, with respect to their considerable weight, also on the physical condition of the photographer. With the proceeding age he made use of the services of young people interested in photography who volunteered to ebcome his „apprentices“ and willingly carried about his equipment, yet at the same time he again started to use during his walks cameras with 6×9 cm-sized negatives. Even for these, in his case „smaller formats“ he made only contact copies which in their final form were surrounded by a large black space, as he used mainly the 13 x 18 cm or even the 18 x 24 cm format of paper. He spoke of these pictures modestly as of „notes“, even if they were equally ripe as the photographs of large sizes, the only difference being in the chamber character of the themes.
All his life long Josef Sudek loved music, he was a regular concert-goer and owner of an extensive collection of gramophone records from which he liked to choose classical works for his friends to hear. In his own activity as photographer this relation became most markedly reflected by the set of 124 pictures which he prepared for his last publication „Janáček — Hukvaldy“. It is remarkable to see how some of Sudek‘s pictures from the country where the composer used to live interpreted in the pictorial sphere the spirit of some of the motifs put to music. In a similar way as Janáček had once started from the study of the Moravian folk music, Sudek‘s photographic art was closely connected with his inner relation to his native land. His photographs meant a harmonious continuation of the best traditions of the culture of vision of his nation. Perhaps no other artist-photographer was so essentially Czech as Josef Sudek. This intimate connection with the surroundings and the places of his emotional ripening doubtlessly contributed much to his singular personality.
And it is through this firm connection with the native soil that Sudek‘s progress towards world-renown was achieved. His approaching 80th birthday became a stimulus for the planning of retrospective exhibitions of Sudek‘s photographs. He himself prepared the basic material for three of them, namely for the Moravian Gallery in Brno, for the Museum of Art and Industry, and a set for the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Socialist Republic. The success of all these sets both at home and abroad showed clearly that their author‘s position among the world topmost photographers had been firmly established. On September 15th 1976 Josef Sudek died. By his death one of the most remarkable works of photographic art was closed. Sudek‘s mastery originated in his deep wisdom of life which for him became the basis for an honest approach towards work. His pictures were free of any speculation or effort to reach success quickly and easily. Sudek‘s dislike of haste and his patience in the search of the creative view gave his photographs an atmosphere of a singular balance and a timeless peace and quiet which will no doubt make his work permanently attractive even for the generations to come. ( Petra Tausk )
