Jan Saudek

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Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek (born May 13, 1935 in Prague ) is a Czech photographer . He is internationally best known for its nude photographs in black / white known.

Life

Jan Saudek was born in 1935 as the twin brother of Karel Saudek; her parents lived in a " mixed marriage ". Her father Gustav was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in February 1945 ; both sons spent the last few months in a camp for ' half-breeds ' in what is now Poland. Saudek began taking photos in the late 1950s.

Saudek was watched critically by the Czechoslovak communist regime because of his popularity in the West since the 1960s and probably until the fall of the Iron Curtain .

Jan Saudek is known to sympathize with the 1968 movement that promoted intellectual freedom and sexual revolution . However, very few of his works can be viewed as directly critical of the regime; Saudek was never a conformist , however.

Jan Saudek also paints and lives with his family in Prague to this day .

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While Saudek had no preferred subjects in the first few years, from the 1970s onwards he mainly became known for his - often idiosyncratic - nude photographs . These have remained the focus of his work to this day, i.e. for over five decades, and the basis of his fame.

Saudek only works on a black and white basis. The vast majority of his pictures have been color-processed, however, as he colored them manually with watercolors to enhance the picture's message ; each colored print is therefore unique . A very specific wall can be seen as a constant recurring constant in his work in many arrangements: an iridescent, brittle old wall with peeling plaster, which gives the impression of morbidity , often serves him as a background and also as a recognition feature of series of pictures, their individual pictures sometimes Years apart. The old wall also gives the impression that the artist only ever had an old, rotten basement as a studio . That may have been something like that in the early years, but today it has to be considered a legend. His models act or pose in front of the same wall ; they are mostly amateurs and mostly girls and women. Family members or himself are often depicted and included in his work. This composition forms the technical and factual framework for Saudek's unmistakable style, to which the following thematic and content-related peculiarities are added.

At first glance, the pictures seem dreamy, like from a much earlier time, which may be due to their elaboration, as they resemble early color photographs . Sometimes this impression is supported by appropriate costumes of the models or ancient interiors . In contrast to their content, the pictures often shock because of their directness. This is also due to the fact that his models do not always correspond to the ideal of beauty - slim, wrinkle-free, well-proportioned - and sometimes even touch the edges of aesthetics with the display of their lush bodies . Occasionally, they also take poses that border on pornography very closely . Saudek also has older and old models in his subject, sometimes with wrinkles and fat breasts and buttocks, which are deliberately not concealed, but specially emphasized, which can meet with contradicting opinions in the viewer and also provoke mixed feelings. Despite these sometimes provocative counter-aesthetics, the viewer has to deal with it, because it is real women who, even with their physical flaws - measured against the ideal of beauty - have not been depicted without self-confidence.

Saudek often works in series. He often uses the principle of the "little tree - change yourself" when he depicts a couple. B. the man naked, the woman clothed, in the second, similar or mirror-like arrangement, the man is dressed and the woman is shown in the nude. Nude doublets are also attractive, in which he arranges two nude portraits facing each other as if on playing cards, often with the contrast between man and woman or even dressed and undressed. The viewer does not immediately know how to look at such a picture or how to hang it, since it is actually a double picture in which there is nowhere “below” - and that creates an additional attraction.

Saudek also loves multi-part series to present his ideas. So he provides z. For example, it depicts short stories, an extreme striptease until the head and pubic hair are “pulled off”, or it documents the development of a person and model over time, sometimes over decades. In the extreme case, a teenage girl is shown in 3–6 pictures , who develops from a young to a mature woman and mother and poses self-confidently in front of the familiar, always the same background, even beyond midlife.

It is precisely this time series on aging that makes it clear that in addition to the sexuality and sensuality of life, the death that comes after aging is always a central theme for Saudek. Two things were particularly formative for Jan Saudek's work: personally, his internment in a concentration camp, and artistically the exhibition The Family of Man , the first comprehensive traveling exhibition of photographic art in the 1960s with examples from many photographers who are now considered classic and shape the medium.

Saudek has published several illustrated books, some of which are also in German. His pictures are shown internationally in galleries and exhibitions. There, and also in books that deal with the subject of nudes - eroticism - sexuality, you can often find pictures by Saudek, as he has an unmistakable style that secures him a permanent place in the aesthetic history of nude photography.

Publications

Most of Jan Saudek's publications are in Czech and have been published in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.

Web links

Commons : Jan Saudek  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Saudek, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech photographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague