Product Details
Hardcover
160 pages
Salander-O'Reilly Galleries
Published 2001
From Library Journal
The influential Czech photographer Sudek (1896-1976) was originally trained as a bookbinder, but his right arm was amputated following an injury in World War I, compelling him to find a new trade. His dedication to photography was complete, and he worked both commercially and for artistic purposes. Lugging his big cameras about, he diligently photographed Prague in intimate compositions with very few people, but he also recorded images of the everyday eggs, bread, his window, and small objects. Occasionally (mostly between 1947 and 1954), Sudek made pigment prints of favorite images, a painstaking process that allows the transfer of photographic images to high-quality textured art paper. Here, 60 such prints are showcased. The images are painterly, with subtle tonal gradations, and include dewy views from the studio window, luminous images of parks and cemeteries, brooding portraits, and quirky and inspired still life arrangements. Preceded by six informative essays, including an interview with friend, curator, and advocate F rov , the compilation demonstrates why Sudek was so aptly called "the poet of Prague." Recommended for large art collections in public and academic libraries. Debora Miller, Minneapolis, MN
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Josef Sudek was the premier Czech photographer of his day, and remains one of the century's most fascinating and admired photographers. Sudek was born in 1896 in Kolín, just west of Prague, and as a young man was badly wounded in World War I. He began his photographic career in 1920--at the dawn of the new republic of Czechoslovakia--with socially observant pictures in the tradition of the turn-of-the-century school of Pictorialism. He did not achieve his real creative breakthrough, however, until the 1940s, in the shadow of yet another Great War. Sudek's quiet, often hermetic work accomplishes that rare aesthetic mission--his images create a space of beauty that is at once subtly and overwhelmingly beautiful, a space of respite from the violence of the world outside the frame. This new volume documents Sudek's masterpieces of the 1940s and 1950s, including his ''studio pictures,'' landscapes, still lifes, and architectural photography, in beautiful reproductions, along with critical and biographical texts. Hardcover, 8.75 x 11.25 inches, 160 pages, illustrated throughout. |
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