Untitled

'Using this box camera completely changed the space. The perspective was different … What had been intended as a dominant suddenly wasn't the most important thing at all … I found out I had to look as if I were the camera.' Josef Sudek 1950s 1

Known as the 'poet of Prague', Josef Sudek's photographic career was affected by two world wars. The first stimulated his amateur photographic interest and cemented it, albeit due to misfortune, after he lost his right arm to a grenade. Denied his chosen trade of bookbinding, Sudek returned from the First World War to follow his interest in photography encouraged by his friend, photographer Jaromír Funke, with whom he founded the Czech Photographic Society. After studying at Prague's newly established State School of Graphic Arts, and influenced by the work of Clarence H White, Sudek became a professional photographer and his business soon flourished. His love of art and music found him in the company of many artists whose work he photographed leading to several commissions from the state gallery. In a synchronistic moment he discovered a photographic contact print of a statue and its quality and depth of detail impressed him greatly. In the intervening years of the Second World War, with commissions dropping off, Sudek stayed close to home developing his new interest in using contact prints direct from the glass plate.

He began varying cycles of photographs such as 'A walk in my garden' 1940-76 and 'The window of my studio' 1940-54. In 'Untitled' 1940-54, the gnarled form of a tree in the grip of winter is seen through the rivers of ice that have formed on Sudek's window, distorting the view and creating a dream-like atmosphere that reflects his interest in the surrealist movement. Using only natural light and long exposures Sudek's skill resulted in prints that have a unique depth of tone and light that contribute to the abstracted forms that he captured direct from nature.

1. Fárová A 1990, ‘A deepening vision’, ‘Aperture’, no 118, spring p 86

© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007