Josef Sudek – Portraits of Czech Friends and Milena Vildova, His Lover

Yesterday, we looked at Josef Sudek's phenomenal Prague Panoramas taken during the 1950's. In addition to that series and his Labyrinths, Still Lifes, and Saint Vitus's Cathedral, Sudek also made portraits, mostly of his friends and family. These portraits show the same amazing composition and light effects of those other images but we are looking at his contemporaries. Although there are any number of web pages devoted to Sudek's work, finding examples of his portrait work is more difficult. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has ten pages of Sudek images, with quite a number of portraits sprinkled from page to page, an enticement to continue to "turn" the page so to speak. Most of these images are different than those in the one book devoted to his portraiture - Josef Sudek - Portraits. Milena Vildova, today's lead image, was Sudek's lover from the 1940's into at least the early sixties. Another image of her face was chosen for the cover of Portraits. This is definitely a must see book. It's available in most libraries, large bookstores such as Powell's. It's also now on my bookshelf.

Without further ado, meet some of Josef Sudek's friends...

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First up is artist Vaclav Sivko. Sivko was a painter, printer and illustrator of both children's books and works of poetry, including a Czech version of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Streets of San Francisco.


Next is his good friend and fellow photographer, Jaromir Funke. Although Funke was born the same year as Sudek, he died in 1945, at the height of his artistic career.


The Portraits book has a frontal pose of Otto Rothmayer. This image shown below is intriguing from a number of perspectives. As Olafur Elliasion, the Icelandic painter, and others would say "take your time" viewing this image. Otto Rothmayer was an architect who helped with the redesign of the Prague Castle.


Bozena Sudkova was Josef Sudek's sister. In 1927 she moved in with him in his newly acquired studio, the Atelier, and took on the role of secretary, assistant, cook, laundress and housekeeper. And there they both stayed for the next 30 years at which point he was assigned an apartment by the government. Sudkova continued to live and work for him in that studio until his death. She remained on until the building itself burned. Subsequent to that time, the Atelier has been rebuilt and can be visited when you travel to Prague. In this view, she sits in front of the open window to the garden.


Sudek doesn't seem to have taken many nude photos, at least there are not many references to them. Christies sold this unidentified image. Perhaps Milena Vildova agreed to this pose as well as the many "regular" portraits found in the Portraits book. I'm choosing to think so.

Prague Panoramas -- Josef Sudek Sausages, 242 and counting

Josef Sudek was a master photographer, a genius with the lens and his use of light. Two areas of his photography have intrigued me -- his panoramic series made in the 1950's and his portraits. Many who are familiar with his work are unaware that he used his genius to take portraits of his family and friends. Those photographs will have to wait for another day.

For today, praha panoramaticka (Prague Panoramas) take the spotlight. In the early 1950's, Sudek acquired an 1894 Kodak Panorama camera. This camera had a spring-drive sweeping lens that made a negative 10 cm x 30 cm (4"x12"). Sudek used this camera on his daily journeys through Prague and the surrounding countryside. One admirer wrote... "The unusual format with its extreme proportions of 1 x 3 and the special distortions caused by the sweeping lens are extremely demanding, like the constraints of a sonnet. Yet like any set of artistic constraints, the peculiar requirements of the panoramic photo offer opportunities not found elsewhere. Sudek never tired of exploring the possibilities of the photographic sonnets he could make with his antique mechanism whose shutter speeds were marked simply "fast" and "slow". With it he gave us a geodesic feeling for the country-side which far surpasses anything we get from isolated views, and in Prague itself he showed how the River Vltava is an integral part of the city and how the labyrinthian quality of the city is offset by its broad open spaces. He was never short of resourceful ways of using the panoramic format. Before the horizontal panorama had yieided all its secrets, Sudek turned the camera on its side and gave us vertical panoramas!"

Prague Panoramas was published in 1956 and is one of the most sought after books in European antiquarian book shops. There are reprints available, but they too are quite pricey. On-line images of these photographs are limited to a few horizontals, but no verticals (ah, change the google search ever so slightly and voila, there's the vertical, see upper right). As you enjoy the composition and light in the following images, think of Sudek and his remarkable sense of humor... On February 26, 1956, Sudek jokingly remarked about his Praha Panoramaticka which was about to go to press: "made 242 sausages of Prague so far; at least 60 more left to make".




And last but not least, the European Commission has Sudek panoramas in one of their conference room. The overall effect is gallery-like until the people have arrived. Perhaps this was why Sudek preferred his photos without people unless he was taking an actual portrait. To be continued...

Josef Sudek - Labyrinths and Windows

Josef Sudek devoted himself to his photography and there are clear cycles to his work. In addition to the Labyrinths (as seen in Wednesday's post), the series, ''From the Window of My Atelier,'' was the focus of his work from 1940 to 1954. These photographs taken of the double pane of glass that separated him from his garden provide us with an insight into his creative spirit. He caught the window dripping with rain, the window clean, the window frosted, a view through the window of a dewy rose, a scene through the window of the garden outside surrounded by some sort of sheer curtain. Some think these are his best photographs.

Josef Sudek on Youtube, always part of the Avant Garde

Rattling around the internet (we've left GW and are now into a new age so I've dropped the 's', it's time), I looked at many articles and sites discussing Josef Sudek. To keep this post simple and direct, I'll just post this moody video in Czech. It's easy to become lost in the language and the images. As Mark Rothko and others would say, just give Sudek a few minutes. six to eight depending upon your download time...

For you, Josef Sudek

What Garden Feels Like

Josef Sudek trained as a book binder, a profession he couldn’t continue after he lost his arm in the war, so he followed his little sister’s footsteps into photography. As a leader in his hometown’s (Czech) cultural scene he was known as the “Poet of Prague”. When he died, at 80, he was still working and planning on his future.
"Garden" here at the museum, shows an abnormally bright light shining in a doorway behind a tree, white outdoor chairs scattered around the deserted yard. It is not the photo I uploaded here, but it is similar.
Sudek was a surrealist, and according to some he made messiness, and chaos beautiful in photograph.
When I stand with "Garden" I sense something has gone terribly wrong, the something that took people away from a cloudless night into a house of such overbearing light. Something that even the chairs feel is wrong, as they sit stock still facing that doorway, stiff and hard and anything but comfortable.

Josef Sudek, Photographer

Josef Sudek's Garden c. 1955 hangs in our photography gallery, I did not find a copy of the photo, but I did find this image, "Labyrinth in my Atelier" c. 1960. He was 64 years into his life, and oh so many pages.
In researching some poets we found a passage from an interview with Charles Wright about our artist of the week:
"There’s a very famous—maybe I’ve said this before—Czech photographer named Josef Sudek. He had only one arm. He was a great photographer and he used this big view camera and he did landscapes and still lifes and things like that. He was once asked why there were no people in his pictures. He said, “Well, I don’t know. There are always people there when I start, but by the time I get everything done and take the picture, they’ve all gone.” And that’s sort of the way my poems are. I think of them as being populated with people who are whispering stories in my ear which I then launder in my own way and present, and by the time the poem gets presented, all the people are gone and nothing’s left but the whispers."

Nothing sums up that sentiment more than this photograph for me. I have a feeling a week on Josef Sudek will be just enough to scratch the surface.