However, in 1940 his artistic world expanded as he
began contact printing for the majority of his work,
evolving still lifes taken on his window sill and
images in his secluded garden. Further maturity
came in 1950 as he began applying a Panoramic
view of familiar themes: Prague and the Czech coun-
tryside. In Sudek’s later years, his work reflects
memories, dreams, relationships, and the deeper
meaning behind the objects, including Labyrinths
1948–1973 and the poetic work honoring Czech
composer LeosˇJana ́cˇek. Sudek continued practicing
his calm contemplative harmonies that were honored
in an exhibition for his 80th birthday, only months
before his death.
Sudek’s active participation in Prague’s cultural
life brought many young artists to his studio.
Requested advice was always given generously, but
not first without great thought and probing into the
artist’s intentions. The inseparable involvement of
Sudek’s photography to the arts is echoed in the
few students he took on. Of the small handful of
four, one became a painter, another a film maker,
the third an eye doctor, and it was only Sonja Bul-
laty, who was instrumental in bringing Sudek to the
public eye in the United States, who became a pho-
tographer. Sudek was also honored by artists in the
1960 Czech exhibition that mounted the work of 22
artists who paid tribute to the master photographer
and his influence on their work.
From the beginning, even before his military ser-
vice, the subjects of Sudek’s photographs were land-
scapes and Prague. It was with the same incredible
patience that he had in waiting and finding just the
right light that he used to explore endless variations,
sometimes for decades, for just the right poetry to
reveal itself and to bring a poem cycle to comple-
tion. Sudek’s early inspiration from the Czech
Romantic landscape artists, rather than photogra-
phers, shows in the idyllic worlds he created in such
series asKolı ́nsky Island and Stromavak Park1924–
1926 andInvalidovna1922–1927. Concurrently,St.
Vitus’ Cathedral1924–1928 contains photographs
where heavenly light streaming through windows
illuminates his search for the truth of his subjects
beyond preconceptions. In these early years, he was
exposed to the Group f/64 and the photographs of
Edward Weston, Paul Caponigro, and the soft-focus
work of Clarence White. People in his photographs
disappeared by 1928 as did his blurred romantic
lens. The Czech Cubist painter Emil Filla and
Funke’s strong modernist ideas did influence
him, echoed 40 years later in the abstract compo-
sitions ofGlass Labyrinths.
While Sudek worked in many of the successive
styles that characterize the development of modern-
ism, he was indifferent to labels. The most important
force in Sudek’s life was music. He played recordings
while printing, and held Tuesday night gatherings in
his studio where he would play from his extensive
record collection. He lived meagerly while support-
ing and exploring all of the arts, and joined the
cultural life of Prague. The Window of my Studio
series (1940–1954) reflects the outer and inner worlds
separated with the misted glass hinting at a return to
the romantic and a deepening of his self-defined art
as if trying to get beyond the objects themselves—
where possibilities seemed limitless inside a restricted
outside world, unfettered by labels.
The Panorama camera reoriented Sudek’s work,
generating graceful compositions in the demanding
extreme proportions of roughly 13. The published
book of these images,Prague Panorama,in1959
became one of Sudek’s best known for its sweeping
balance. In the woods of Bohemia and Moravia, he
captured huge dead trees—his ‘‘sleeping giants’’—
sympathetically with limbs missing. The seriesA
Walk in the Magic Gardenwas a collaboration with
friend and architect Otto Rothmayer, which dis-
played surrealist aesthetics—or arguably simply
Sudek’s love for the magic in life—and most cer-
tainly an evolving exploration of familiar themes.
Increasingly frequently, he created ‘‘remembrances’’
for people who had touched his life.
For more than 20 years, Sudek had made both
contact prints and enlargements, but starting in
1940 he began almost exclusively making contact
prints. He also began experimenting with printing
papers and techniques. The large format cameras,
usually 57, 1216 or 2¼3¼ for note-taking,
were the reason he could be seen prowling the
streets of Prague or roaming the Czechoslovakian
countryside with a tripod and view camera. In
1950, after he was able to repair an 1894 Kodak
Panorama he had located, he began working exten-
sively with it, reviving a cycle he began during the
war by placing two separate photographs together
to obtain an elongated image.
Sudek has been labeled an escapist because he was
consistently apolitical during tremendously turbu-
lent times. Yet Sudek records the world as an embo-
diment of overarching history. And his art offers an
experience of stability and serenity brought forward
as a shared humane surroundings to history, pre-
sented for the present moment, wherever it stands.
JanetYatesSUDEK, JOSEF