13/09/2022
⚫️ About legendary photographers | Josef Sudek
Josef Sudek is a classic of artistic photography, and has been called "the poet of Prague". Having lost his right arm in World War I, he spent his entire life shooting with bulky cameras on a wooden tripod. Sudek's journey is extraordinary — he achieved international fame from the comfort of his tiny studio, shooting from the window of his old garden.
The magical effect of Josef Sudek's photographs is not just a beautiful play on words. The light in his works is not static. Standing at the camera for hours, he used long exposures to capture the most fleeting changes in light, capable of conveying the different states of nature of the object. By documenting these states, superimposing them on each other, he created something other than mere photography.
Sudek trusted his intuition. Those who knew him for decades assure that he never measured exposure when taking pictures, never used an exposure meter. Sudek's exposure meter was a cup of strong jasmine tea, which he brewed while waiting for the right moment, or two sides of a record of his favourite Vivaldi. Sudek worshipped music. "And the music plays!" — was his favourite phrase.
At the age of eighteen Sudek was conscripted to the front, at the same age he was wounded, causing gangrene. His right arm had to be amputated to the shoulder. But Sudek started filming as a teenager. He experimented with box cameras. During his service, even before he was wounded, he shot several albums. The camera became his salvation during a stay in a military hospital, where he spent several years making portraits of soldiers.
When he returned from the war, his friends got him membership in a photography club with a small stipend. To get commissions as a photographer, he needed a license, which required a diploma. Sudek got it by graduating from the State Polygraphic School in the photography department.
After that, Sudek began shooting the reconstruction of the main symbol of Prague — St. Vitus Cathedral. The tomb of the Czech kings had been under construction for almost six centuries and its long construction was finally nearing completion, so Sudek tried to capture the most important phases with his camera.
Sudek's biographers write about a personal crisis, which befell the photographer in 1926. Together with some musicians he knew, he toured Italy, where he fought in the war. At one of the concerts, Sudek disappeared. He rushed off in search of the very place, the farm where he had been taken after he was wounded. Josef did not appear for several months. When he returned home to Prague, he said he would never leave it again.
He bought an old wooden studio house on the outskirts of town from a local photographer and began shooting. Sudek photographed his garden, as he called it, in rain, snow, fog, at dusk and dawn.
Still-life photography was the next stage for him. Sudek photographed the simplest everyday things, trying to pe*****te their essence. His interest in the inanimate world helped him to create during the German occupation of Bohemia. At that time, he stayed in his studio, documenting Prague through foggy windows in the darkness of night.
He had no interest in progress — he still carried a heavy camera and tripod on his shoulder. Fascinated by the old master's "life-size" photographs, henceforth he only made contact prints - abandoning enlarged copies and printing in the size of negatives.
Sudek's first solo exhibition in 1933 was successful. His book on the cathedral made him a celebrity in his own circle. Sudek could also receive requests for advertising and publicity, magazine subscriptions and commissions. In 1956, when the photographer turned sixty, a major monograph was published.
Sudek's work first appeared in America in 1974 in a major retrospective. He personally supervised the preparation of an exhibition celebrating his 80th birthday, first in Prague and then in London. He is said to have felt that this was his last exhibition in his lifetime. On 15 September 1976 he suffered a heart attack and died on the way to hospital.
The wooden house which had been his inspiration and alchemy workshop for over thirty years burnt down in 1985, but was rebuilt in the 2000s. It now houses the photographer's museum and visitors have the opportunity to visit it.
