Jan Saudek

by Jan Saudek, Taschen Publishing

The theater of sensual dreams The Czech Republic has long been a land of mystery and magic, home to alchemists, artists, and the original bohemians, all of them weavers of spells, creators of fantastic worlds of the imagination. Internationally famous Czech photographer Jan Saudek is no exception, and equally as uncompromising in pursuit of his own unique vision. For over four decades Saudek has created a parallel photographic universe, a two-dimensional home full of longing, peopled with the most extraordinary characters and colored by desire. The timeless strength of his hand-tinted photographs lies in their poetic compositions and their forceful?at times ribald?pictorial language, with its overtones of medieval genre pictures and Baroque mythology. Rejecting the traditional beauty in his famous nude photographs, Saudek shows the distinctively old women, fat women, children; real people in tableaux vivants that remind us of everything from surreal early movies to fin-de-siecle carnival nights. They exist outside time, a uniquely colored and almost mythical theater of dreams. Covering his debut in the 1950s through his lesser-known work to recent images, this dazzling collection offers us the true ""velvet revolution,"" fertile and unsettling images from the dreams we might still have. The Daniela Mr?zkov?, critic and editor of the Czech magazines Revue fotografie and Fotografie-Magaz?n, is the author of sixteen books on photography published in the Czech Republic and abroad, and the curator of around fifty photography exhibitions. She has been a member of international juries, and has authored film and television documentaries on photography and photographers. She hasfollowed Jan Saudek's work since his early years and is the author of Saudek's first Czech monograph, The Theatre of Life.

Genres: Photography, Art

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1997

About the author

Jan Saudek is nowadays the most renowned Czech phoptographer in the world. He has had over 400 one-man shows held at. His photographs are included in the most important world collections.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensually perverse or perversely sensual? Captivating in technique and subject matter.

[Echo Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

You like this style of photography or you hate it. Look at my stars :)