Czech photographer Frantisek Drtikol (1883-1961) reinvented the genre of nude photography for the early twentieth century. Drtikol opened his Prague studio in 1907, and his nudes from this early period convey the dreamy eroticism of Art Nouveau and the foreboding accents of Prague Symbolism that he was to return to throughout his somewhat brief career (Drtikol abandoned photography for painting in 1935, and it was not until curator Anna Fárová's now legendary 1972 Prague exhibition that this work was rediscovered by a broader public). But Drtikol quickly absorbed into his photography the myriad new idioms of the interbellum years, and freighted his nudes with the dramatic lighting of silent film and the more austere geometric effects and dynamic poses of Futurism, Cubism and Bauhaus. Surveying his daring and expressive nudes of the 1920s and 1930s, this important publication charts Drtikol's adventurous treatments of the nude as they evolved in their quirky conversation with modernist innovations--from the early nymphs and femme fatales to more abstracted studies that dramatize light and kinetic qualities. This smartly conceived volume confirms Drtikol's place as one of the greatest photographers of the early twentieth century.

Frantisek Drtikol

Arts & Photography

Fárová, Anna

Birgus, Vladimír

Photography & Video

Hatje Cantz

Frantisek Drtikol: Photograph des Art Deco (German Edition)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Schirmer/Mosel

From teenager to grandmother: Swiss photographer Iren Stehli photographed the life of Libuna, a gypsy in Prague, over the course of 27 years. We experience Li-buna’s first love, her children, how she becomes a grandmother at age 35, difficult years of separation, unbeliev-able strength, keeping the family together in spite of all opposition. A novel in images about a woman who never gives up.This book is a long-term study, a precise and close view of the margins of eastern European society under communism and after the Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia. A narrative about love, tenderness, and pain, it is witness to Libuna’s unfaltering strength and lust for life. The highs and lows of a woman’s life are captured in an unusual and sensitive manner. The detail-rich pictures depict a story of everyday life and popular culture in the former Eastern Bloc. Libuna is the astounding evidence that the secret of photography is neither sensationalism nor the invention of pretentious phantasmagoria, but rather the patient and unobtrusive search for images whose glimpse of the world turns into epiphanies, refractions of light into an indescribable truth of the world.

Iren Stehli: Libuna: A Gypsy's Life in Prague

Stehli, Iren

Stehll, Iren

Comalini, Franca

Individual Artists

Scalo Verlag Ac

Dubbed the "poet of Prague," Josef Sudek was one of the most important and celebrated of Czech photographers. Sudek produced his best work during his middle-aged years, having grown up and out of the rules of Modernism and into a style of his own. Whereas his photographs from the 1930s are mainly a reflection of the external world, by the 1940s he was returning to himself, finding his own unique creative path. It was during this period that he made his most famous photograph, a view of the world seen through his studio window, the window ledge doubling as a stage for still life objects--a setup which he repeated to great effect. Not even the pressures of WWII and the difficult postwar years, including the demands of socialist realism in the arts, interrupted the continuity of his oeuvre.

Josef Sudek

Sudek, Josef

Gina Kehayoff Pub

Known for his higly formalized, senisitive images of the vestiges of gypsy life, Czech photographer Josef Koudelka has been traveling the world since 1962, documenting their communities in Eastern Europe, England, Ireland, France, and Spain. Living as his subjects do, constantly on the move and defiantly independent, Koudelka has always refused magazine and commercial assignments, and has worked for years without a permanent darkroom. Focusing on the rituals of everyday life, on birth, marriage, and death, he has produced years of work, including the cycles reproduced here: Theater, Gypsies, Prague 1968 (Invasion), Exiles, and Chaos. These well-known series are complemented by lesser-known photographs from the 1950s. Included as well are an essay by Czech art historian Anna Farova, who has followed Koudelka throughout his career, and an expansive interview with the artist conducted by Karel Hvizdala over a period of 10 years.

Josef Koudelka (TORST)

Torst

Josef Sudek (Fototorst) (English and Czech Edition)

Josef Sudek was Prague's Atget. From the mid-1920s until his death in 1976, Sudek photographed everything--the Gothic and Baroque architecture, the streets and objects--usually leaving the frame free of people. Where Atget photographed the social realities of Paris, Sudek captured a more subjective experience of the city where he was born. Because he was reclusive, a large portion of Sudek's body of work was captured through his studio window--he was particularly fond of how the glass refracted light. The Window of My Studio series, spanning from the beginning of the Second World War to the first half of the 1950s, has never previously been compiled in one volume. This publication presents the series, which was of fundamental importance to Sudek, for it caused his work to verge even more into a Surreal or Magic Realist style, with blurred images and strong shadows. Photography historian Anna Farova contributes an introduction and an extensive biographical chronology to this volume, which also includes a complete bibliography of portfolios, books and catalogues of Sudek's work, as well as a complete list of his exhibitions--information that is difficult to find elsewhere. The publication has been produced in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Josef Sudek: The Window of My Studio (TORST)

Dubbed the “poet of Prague,” Josef Sudek (1896–1976) was one of the most important and celebrated of Czech photographers. Sudek produced his best work during his middle-aged years, having grown up and out of the rules of modernism and into a style of his own. Whereas his photographs from the 1930s are mainly a reflection of the external world, by the 1940s he was returning to himself, finding his own unique creative path. It was during this period that he made his most famous photograph, a view of the world seen through his studio window, the window ledge doubling as a stage for still-life objects―a setup which he repeated to great effect. Not even the pressures of World War II and the difficult postwar years―including the demands of socialist realism in the arts―interrupted the continuity of his oeuvre, documented in this back-in-print volume.

Josef Sudek (Fototorst, 11)

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