cheers
-steve
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 14:58:14 -0500
From: "Bill Patterson (608) 263-4458" <WPATTERSON@ASAP.Bus.Wisc.Edu>
Subject: Re: Sudek show
To: alt-photo-process@vast.unsw.edu.au
I discovered the photography of Josef Sudek this past year and have quickly
developed an appreciation for it. I have two books of his photographs, but
the titles aren't in front of me right now. One of the books mentions that
books of his photographs are not very common in the U.S.
I remember reading in one of the books that Sudek saw a print that he liked
in 1941 (I think) and discovered that it was a contact print. From then on,
he only made contact prints. I will have to look in this volume to see if
the processes that he used are mentioned. I quickly looked at the on-line
descriptions of some Sudek prints on the WWW (see below). All except one
are labeled as "Gelatin Silver Print". The exception is "Still Life with Bread
and Glass" (his lunch, from my reading) that is described as a "Varnished
Silver Bromide Print" with the explanation "This is a extremely rare, emulsion
transfer print. Sudek transferred the emulsion from a piece of photographic
paper to a piece of drawing paper, picking up its texture and color, which
are visible through the transferred emulsion."
I found the Sudek prints with descriptions on the WWW at the URL
http://www.webart.com/photocollect/currexib/bowl.htm
You start with the photo "Bowl with Cherry" and click on Next_Image to
see the next photograph in the series.
I downloaded a short biography of Josef Sudek from the WWW pages and I've
appended it to this message.
Bill Patterson (wpatterson@asap.bus.wisc.edu)
Biography of
Josef Sudek
Born March 17, 1896, in Kolin, Czechoslovakia, Sudek died September 15, 1976,
in Prague. He studied photography at the School of Graphic Art in Prague with
Professor Karel Novak (1922-23). A lifelong passion for music also influenced
his life and work.
After being apprenticed to a bookbinder (1911-13) Sudek was inducted into the
army (1915). While at the Italian front he was seriously injured and later
suffered the loss of his right arm. Because of this handicap he could no
longer be a bookbinder, so he turned to photography. In 1920 Sudek joined the
Club for Amateur Photographers in Prague, and in 1924, with Jaromire Funke
and other avant-garde photographers, he founded the Czech Photographic
Society. He was awarded the Order of Work by the Czech government in 1966 and
received the title Artist of Merit in 1961, the first photographer so honored
by the Czech government.
Known for lyrical images that show a fine eye for life's intimate details,
Sudek once explained that "everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of
a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a
seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings....
To capture some of this - I suppose that's lyricism."
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