studio in the center of the city. His outstanding por-
traits attracted first the clientele from the Prague art
circles, soon afterwards Drtikol—with his partner
Augustin Sˇkarda (1879–1937)—became the premiere
portrait photographer in Prague.
Drtikol is considered to be the founder of the
modern Czech photography—in addition to Karel
Nova ́k (1882–1952) and Vladimı ́r Jindrˇich Bufka
(1887–1916)—whose works mark an end of the
general stagnation of the photography in Bohemia.
Drtikol developed a specific form of pictorialist
photography, the goal of which was to lift to the
level of art by depicting ‘‘noble’’ subject matter
(such as allegorical scenes, drama tableaux, nature
scenes, and architectural ruins) in complex compo-
sitions. However, Drtikol was not of the opinion
that photography should move into the proximity
of painting. His procedure of the oil, pigment, or
rubber prints—used until the late 1920s—served
rather in his portrait photography to underline
the character of the photographed person as clearly
as possible. In nude photography, he wanted to
show not only the body but also the soul. In
order to elicit more clearly this idea, which had to
be inherent—according to his opinion—in each
artistic photograph, he worked on his negatives
by painting whole picture portions or retouching
them, manufacturing cutouts, and using different
lighting effects, in order to express his visions.
Drtikol began to work on his series of nude pic-
tures. They made him famous before World War I:
The complicated noble prints (bromoil, coal, multi-
color pigment prints) belong in their elegance,
refinement of lines, and expression of strength of
the female body to the most important pictorialist
pictures and can easily compete with the work of
Constantin Puyo or Robert Demachy, leading
members of the Linked Ring Brotherhood.
Drtikol entered consciously into the pictorial tra-
dition of the Photo Secession: his nudes mirrored
the themes of the paintings of his countryman and
famous painter of the Art Nouveau movement
Alphonse Mucha, the Belgian Symbolists Fernand
Khnopff and Fe ́licien Rops:Femme fatale,Salome,
Judith, andCleopatrawere the pictorialist contribu-
tions to one of the predominant topics of thefin de
sie`cle. Drtikol’s participation in the large exhibition
in London (International Exhibition of the Salon of
London of Photography, 1913) announced the
beginning of his international career.
In 1920, under the influence of ‘‘straight photo-
graphy,’’ Drtikol’s concept of nude photography
changed. Gradually he gave up the complicated
noble print, of which he was the undisputed master
in Prague, and devoted himself above all to the
pigment print. Drtikol placed and lit his nudes in
front of geometrically arranged window blinds in
such a way that the body forms were emphasized.
This placement stressed—in contrast to the preced-
ing period, in which the flatness of the noble prints
underlined the two-dimensionality and in which
space structure was suppressed—the depth and the
special light direction characteristic of this second
period. Between 1920 and 1925, Drtikol still
worked on many photographs with painting and
retouching. His 1921 pigmented print The Bow
emphasized the formal qualities of the nude female
form by way of a moody abstraction.
In a manifesto, which he wrote by the end of the
1920s together with Jaromı ́r Funke (1896–1945),
Drtikol stressed the primacy of the staging of the
photographic picture that was developed before as
an ‘‘interior (inner) vision’’:
We photograph our ‘‘inner visions’’; although we photo-
graph in such a way as all others, there are only by us
composed, arranged subjects, which we take up. We are
directors of those subjects, the interiors of which we
create by ourselves....Photography is for us an expres-
sion of the own and individual aspect.Under the influence of his wife, the dancer Ervı ́na
Kupferova ́, who practiced free expression dance
according to Emile J. Dalcroz (1865–1950) who
postulated rhythm and movement as original values
of free dance, Drtikol’s photographs gained dy-
namics. Around 1925, he gave up the static concep-
tion of the picture, and movement and light
direction now stood in the foreground. The female
body also was taken up fragmentarily, in order to
underline the space structure or the rhythm of
movement. Those prints were internationally highly
esteemed and sold at expensive prices.
Drtikol’s landscape, portrait, and nude photo-
graphy formed a unit from the beginning. With
care and precision, as he had learned in Munich,
he worked out every negative. His nude photo-
graphs taken between 1910 and 1930 were consid-
ered to be revolutionary, sensitive, and absolutely
modern. Drtikol was also an outstanding land-
scape and portrait photographer; his photographs
of important personalities of the 1920s and 1930s
(LeosˇJana ́cˇek, Paul Vale ́ry, Rabindranath Tagore,
Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, or Josef Cˇapek) be-
long to the best of portrait art at this time:Every person requires another illumination, in order to
recognize his character. Not only that everyone has to
recognize himself—but he has to do it at first sight.
Nevertheless it is difficult to recognize a human being
on the street, whom we had met for the first time inDRTIKOL, FRANTISˇEK