Peter Župník - Lights

25. 6. - 12. 9. 2004

„Peter Župník clearly gives priority to an internal model before an external one as there is question of a process of poetization and the creation of a different reality, searching of the mystery of space and time in a natural world and in one artificially created. He is a paradoxical photographer, for he is neither a director of his visions, nor their documentarian, neither a naive, nor a sophisticated intellectual. He is a very specific photographer, a visual poet of uncommon inventiveness, whose visual speech has an unrepeatable style.“

Anna Fárová, from the monography of Peter Župník, 1993


Peter Župník: The Light Within

Peter Župník (1961) has been a photographer since childhood. He was first captivated by phenomena of his immediate surroundings: flowers, fruit, rocks, wildlife... Even though in the intermittent time he worked in various studios along the path linking Slovakia, Prague and France, he has remained faithful to himself. His inner manner is that of a poet whose vision of reality is echoed in the titles of his works.

While still at the School of industrial arts at Kosice (1976-1980), he was already capturing attention. Before he finished his studies there, Professor Ján Smok invited him to take the entrance exam for the Photographic department of FAMU in Prague. As a novice monk he excelled at the art academy: in the middle of the 80s, during mid-term exams, he produced an album of local color rock concert snapshots, and soon after, had a solo exhibition of diptychs at the prestigious Foma gallery in Prague (1986). He derived his manner working with analogies of form found in diverse motifs containing visual paradoxes. For example, he juxtaposed the dark shadow of a human silhouette, stretched out in a snowy field, with the image of a snow-white seagull, wings spread out, alighting upon the surface of a muddy river. Župník emphasizes his subjective approach with the exhibition’s title: "Vo Mne" (about me), also the name for a cycle of bright-colored touched up blow-ups displayed in the present exhibition. These hand-manipulated solitaires are formally contrasted with a collection, entitled Pair (1982 – 90), published together in the artist’s monograph, a book that includes a text by Václav Macek (published by Osveta in Martin, 1993). The book argues that Peter Župník seeks a way of return: aiming on one hand towards his point of departure, and on the other, in opposition to contemporary currents defined by the digital revolution.

The current double exhibition documents the depth with which the photographer worked over the last decade while living as a father of three in Paris. He found there a decisive time to himself, a time to pause and gaze and a time to contemplate childhood. In the end, he found sufficient patience to allow creative ideas mature. But it wasn’t easy: "The more I wanted to photograph something," he says, "the fewer pictures I could take." Župník’s poetics accompany a liberation from exterior effects. He continues to photograph things from surroundings closest to him, such as in the beginning, in the country of his upbringing, at Spiš (Slovakia). Whereas his juvenilia lacked individuality, the author has since come to himself and finally learned and matured to be able to subtly, non-violently intervene towards the positive. As the tightly moderated titles of his works indicate, he is not interested in illustrating fantasizing eruptions. A latent image is exposed impulsively, emerging from the compulsive need to capture a poetic situation such as a leaf of leek while preparing dinner. It is later, again under the influence of an inspirational moment, that he interprets anew by enlarging a straightforwardly obtained picture. Some positives tend to suddenly light up for Zupnik, as he says himself, "I don’t photograph what I see, but instead the tension, the feeling, the mood."

"The story of the emergence is usually long. Pictures that are too specific fade with time. The ones with potential are those that are vague and non-speculating. For example, the symbol of the cross out of a leek leaf didn’t leap out right away. I didn’t recognize the crucifixion while taking the picture. That’s why I usually date my photographs twice: First when the negative is made, and the second in the final realization. I move on the boundary of the perceptible. The pastel over-painting is merely an accentuation of natural features, but it takes a lot of time, and it also took a lot of time before I could really develop such a suitable subtle manner." In comparison with the distant past, a mature vision has ripened in Župník. Some of the older photographs became definite moments and formed the spine of earlier work. One of these is Pocta Tarkovskému (homage of Tarkovsky) (1985/90), installed in the Ceské pojistovny Gallery. Since then, his own refined comprehension of his innate talent over the past decade has contributed towards more profound results. An apparition of St. Veronica’s veil in his Resurrection implies all of Christian iconography.

The exhibition of thirty works (mainly from the past dozen years) is named Light of voices to alchemical essence of the photographic medium full truth. Just like Josef Sudek in his time, The art Peter Župník, in the replica of Sudek’s studio, evokes a secret soulfulness of the mundane world using the simplest of references: the bearer of poetic magic is the glance and introspection.

Josef Moucha

Jaroslav Rössler - Experiments of 50´- 70´)

2 April - 9 May 2004

Private viewing on Thursday 1 April at 6 p.m.

This is the second of a series of three exhibitions of the classic of avant-garde photography, Jaroslav Rössler, organised by the Josef Sudek Studio and it is focussed on Rössler's post-war experiments with various photographic techniques.

The photographer Jaroslav Rössler (born on 25 May 1902 in Smilov - died 5 January 1990 in Prague) is one of the most significant figures of world visual culture. He was a pioneer of abstraction in a medium, which before him had been understood as supremely realistic.

There are two monographs dealing with his work (from the publishers Torst 2001 and Kant 2003). This year a retrospective exhibition, which had its premiere in the Prague Museum of Applied Art in 2001, ended its travels at the International Photographic Forum in Frankfurt on Main. The compact cross-section "Experiments of the Fifties to Seventies", however, appreciates in the intimate surroundings of the Josef Sudek Studio those results of the artist's imagination, which were not usually made public by the above-mentioned projects of Professor Vladimír Birgus. For instance it includes examples of a still-life series very rewarding to the viewer, combined with the projection of shots of the Eiffel Tower.

The Josef Sudek Studio, managed by David Korecký, proved last year in a concentrated manner how basic a change in artistic thinking Jaroslav Rössler caused after the First World War with his unprecedented non-objective creations, fundamentally only making use of light. Surprisingly there has for a long time no exclusive selection concentrated solely on Rössler's pure photogeny (not even in a periodical). In this respect the turning point was the collection entitled "Jaroslav Rössler: Early Abstractions" (from 13 June to 27 July 2003). Rössler's first creative phase was appreciated by Karel Teige, when early in 1923, dazzled, he exclaimed: "Why, it's better than Man Ray!" Also at that time he accepted Rössler as a member of the Devětsil arts guild and systematically published him in periodicals, collections and exhibition reviews of the avant-garde. The early Rössler represented in an outstanding fashion the modernism of the period between the wars. For more than fifteen years he moved in the group of top internationals. Apart from photography he also devoted time to drawing, collage or pictorial poems, eventually typographic montages. He returned to the abstract, however, throughout his productive life, from the beginning of the twenties to the end of the seventies.

Jaroslav Rössler served his apprenticeship in the firm of Drtikol & Co. in the years 1917 to 1920. This is also where he found his future wife, Gertruda Fischerová. The couple then lived from the end of 1927 in Paris (after a preliminary working stay in the French metropolis in the first half of 1926). Rössler supported his family by working in commercial studios and complained bitterly that in such an environment there could be no thought of the free soaring of the soul. In July 1935 he was arrested for taking photographs of a demonstration by state employees. The French police expelled him without delay from what was then the Mecca of the Arts as a sympathiser. Deeply despondent, he and his wife then opened a studio in Žižkov in Prague. During the war, which seriously shook the sensitive artist, he did not devote any time to art. His inspiration was aroused once more in the second half of the forties. The new creative firing was ushered in, apart from drawn reminiscences of the years in Paris, by montages of negatives exposed in France with new shots, such as the portrait of his daughter Sylva (1947).

The exhibition "Experiments of the Fifties to Seventies", realised thanks to the helpfulness and co-operation of the author's family, focuses on the period when Rössler's visions were altering considerably. Not only the photographer's heritage from between the wars, but also after the war is among the most original Czech contributions to the history of art in general. Rössler began to work intensively once again with free creativity in the second half of the fifties. Although he followed on from the eruption of drawings of Old Testament and Parisian motifs at the beginning of 1949 at the point where he had ended twenty years earlier on leaving France, he did not stop at the evocation of the ghosts of the past. The second unique contribution of Jaroslav Rössler lies in the parallels to the informal, sometimes with a quite unusual pastel background colouring. These works, however, cannot be realised anew because Rössler's alchemy in the harmonising of the varied shades remains a secret.

As a result of having been sold up Rössler's often unique works have become scattered not only among the depositaries of well-known institutions, the list of which takes up several lines in the New Encyclopaedia of Czech Graphic Art, but also in private collections. From there they rarely reach the light of day. Nevertheless, even the black-and-white enlargements of the post-war photographs now exhibited show the harmony of the author with the products of contemporaries a generation younger. Rössler was one of those who, with the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, uncompromisingly rejected socialist realism. One must consider as his colleague in particular Vladimír Boudník. Except that Jaroslav Rössler fought his way to completely personal expression in hiding and introvert isolation.

In spite of all the exceptional circumstances Rössler's experimentation fits the requirements of the expression of the period: from the fifties he worked in a line going against (although he himself had promoted it) the geometrical depiction of simple (and through purist vision further simplified) objects. And also against other remnants of the morphology of the avant-garde between the wars. Rössler's innovations were in harmony with the processes that on the other side of the Iron Curtain might be called subjective photography. If after the First World War Rössler was led by existential inevitability to the decorative design of advertising space, from the fifties he produced, apart from his livelihood, pictures on a basis that was technologically quite different and at the same time also spiritually original. The refined creative processes, which he used for this purpose, included the Sabattier effect, pigment and the turning of a negative into a diapositive. The author also liked to make photography creatively special by means of a prismatic attachment enabling the multiple interleaving of the motif in the picture, which was his own invention from the twenties. In the fifties, in addition to this, he projected into the arrangement of a still-life diapositives of further shots. Quite frequently the combination of the various procedures goes so far that it is impossible to decipher them.

Rössler's heritage consists of some 710 negatives. Of these 55 were newly enlarged by the author's daughter. The dimensions of the positives do not exceed the customs of the artist's youth, measuring at most 27 x 20.5 cm. The aim is a triptych of exhibitions in the Josef Sudek Studio, opened at yearly intervals. Last year's "Early Abstractions" under the curatorship of J. Moucha presented 18 items from the oldest layers of his work (1923 - 1947); these were supplemented by a stylised self-portrait. These were almost all purely creations of light of which the negatives exist (usually on glass measuring 9 x 9 cm). Only variations very close in composition were omitted. The further two parts of the retrospective exhibition are comparable in extent and together correspond to the fact that roughly two thirds of the negatives are of post-war origin (6 x 6 cm on plastic). The amount of work makes it possible to model varying cross-sections. In doing this it is always necessary to differentiate the photographs intended only as an interim stage for further processing. "Experiments of the Fifties to Seventies" were selected by D. Korecký and J. Moucha. The dominant trait of the final stage of creativity will be portrayed by "Mirroring", which will take place in 2005 with D. Korecký as the curator.

The selection of photographs is provided with approximate dates. The assigning of years is difficult in the case of Rössler, because he did not give up techniques once he had mastered them or invented them and repeatedly included them in the most varied ways, quite remote from similar ones. In the same way he returned to old negatives and processed them once again. Wherever it was possible we used as a basis the dates given for the reproductions published during the author's lifetime. Usually the works did not have titles even at the time of their origin.

Josef Moucha, joint-curator of the exhibition

Alexandr Hackenschmied: Prague - Paris - New York

11 February - 28 March 2004

Press conference on Tuesday 10 February at 11 a.m. in the Gallery of the French Institute, Štěpánská 35

Private View on Tuesday 10 February 2004
- From 5 p.m. in the Josef Sudek Studio - introductory speeches by Mr. Joël de Zorzi, Ambassador of the French Republic, David Korecký and Pavel Vančát
- From 6.30 p.m. in the French Institute - projection of the films Bezúčelná procházka (Aimless Walk, 1930) and Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), the projection will be opened by Tino Hammid, son of the author
- From 7 p.m. in the French Institute - introduction by the Director of the French Institute, Didier Montagné, and Pavel Dias

This exhibition, which takes place simultaneously in the Josef Sudek Studio and the French Institute in Prague, presents the photographic work of Alexandr Hackenschmied in its most varied aspects: freelance and advertising photographs from the thirties, documentary photographs from his travels with Jan Baťa, from travels in the USA (1936), photographs from his stay in Paris (1939) and photographs inspired by his wife, Maya Deren, from the forties.
This is most extensive retrospection so far of this legendary author.

At the time of the exhibition there will be a cinematographic retrospection in the Ponrepo Cinema - the projection hall of the National Film Archives.
The exhibition in the French Institute is supplemented by the projection of fifty photographs published in periodicals in the years 1928-35.
For the exhibition a selection of theoretical texts by A. Hackenschmied from the thirties will be published in Czech and French versions.

Extent of the exhibition:

In the Josef Sudek Studio are presented some twenty photographs inspired by Maya Deren

From the meeting with Maya Deren there arose not only key works of independent cinematography, but also an extensive series of civilian photographic portraits, nudes and arranged photographs inspired by their joint film work. These range from fanciful arrangements to passionate imagery.

Some fifty photographs are exhibited in the Gallery at Štěpánská 35

New Photography
Although photography was for Hackenschmied only the pathway to films, he dedicated himself to it with great enthusiasm at the turn of the twenties and thirties. Apart from an exhibition in the Aventinum Attic his photographs also appeared in other exhibitions and in many periodicals, but especially in his home periodical Pestrý týden (Varied Week). Hackenschmied was thus at this time among the leading pioneers of "New Photography", as well as one of the leading authors of applied photography.
America 1936
Unique negatives from the trip of the members of the Baťa Film Studio to the United States were discovered in Zlín only in 1999. They display both enchantment with the American style of life and also the reserve of the European with regard to the mighty American culture.
Paris
From February to June 1939 Hackenschmied found himself fleeing from Nazism in Paris. As a sudden refugee at the moment of the outbreak of conflict he returned once again, after many years, to photography and the result was an outstanding series of photographs, which departed, as it were, from the heritage of the photographic avant-garde.

OPENING HOURS:

The Josef Sudek Studio (Újezd 30, Prague 1) is open daily except Mondays from 12 noon to 6 p.m.
The Gallery of the French Institute (Štěpánská 35, Prague 1) is open Monday - Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Ponrepo Cinema (Bartolomějská 11, Prague1), for programme see www.nfa.cz

Curators: Pavel Dias, Pavel Vančát, and Petra Kosková
Author of project: Jana Bartoníková
Texts: Alexandr Hackenschmied, Pavel Dias, and Pavel Vančát
Realisation: Anna Pravdová and Lada Hubatová-Vacková (French Institute), David Korecký (Fotograf v zahradě - Photographer in the Garden)
Graphic design: Ateliér 2GD

Acknowledgement of assistance and co-operation: NFA - Briana Čechová, Cabinet of Alexandr Hackenschmied in the Museum of South-east Moravia in Zlín, Moravian Gallery in Brno - Antonín Dufek, TORST - Viktor Stoilov, Martina Kudláček, Jiří Novotný, Václav Kofroň and Marian Beneš …and especially Saša, Julie and Tino Hammid
The project was supported by: The Tomáš Baťa Foundation
Organisers: Fotograf v zahradě and the French Institute in Prague

Text for the exhibition:

ALEXANDR HACKENSCHMIED (*1907)

Alexandr Hackenschmied (from 1947 the American citizen Alexander Hammid) is one of the founder creative and organisational personalities of modern Czech photography and films. From the end of the twenties he published in the periodicals of the time photographs in the "New Eternity" style and at the same time gradually made himself known in the film profession. In the course of the thirties he then became one of the most important Czech filmmakers and from the forties he made a name for himself in the USA as the author of documentary and experimental films.

Hackenschmied was already interested in photography and films when still studying at secondary school and he began to develop both interests more emphatically already at the end of the twenties. An important impulse for him was a visit to the exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart in 1929. In May 1930 he organised the turning-point exhibition New Czech Photography, which meant the first joint appearance of the most important representatives of the Czech photographic avant-garde, among whom were represented, apart from him and his friends L. E. Berka and J. Lehovec, also J. Sudek, J. Funke, J. Rössler and others. Apart from the exhibition in the Aventinum Attic his photographs appeared at that time in many periodicals, but especially in his home periodical, Pestrý týden (Varied Week). Hackenschmied was one of the pioneers of freelance and applied "New Photography". Photographs from his earliest and most intensive photographic period are unfortunately known to us mostly only from the work published in periodicals.
Already in 1928 Hackenschmied was co-operating as an assistant architect with Gustav Machatý on the film Erotikon and he gradually worked his way in among the film professionals. In 1930 he also made his first film as an author - Bezúčelná procházka (Aimless Walk), which he introduced at the first of four weeks of independent films organised by him in the Kotva Cinema. In the first half of the thirties he participated in several more films, both of his own and of others, and he contributed, among other things, the radical editing of the film Zem spieva (The Earth Sings) by K. Plicka, awarded the Gold Cup at the Festival in Venice in 1934.

In the years 1935-39 he participated, together with E. Klos, L. Kolda, F. Pilát, P. Hrdlička and J. Lukas, in the beginnings of the Zlín Film Studio and here he created a number of advertising and promotion shots still valued today. The advertising film Silnice zpívá (The Road Sings) received an award in 1937 at the World Exhibition in Paris. Unique negatives from the journey of the members of the Baťa Film Studio to the United States in 1936 were only discovered in Zlín in 1999. Within the framework of his Zlín commitment Hackenschmied also accompanied J. Baťa in 1937 on trips abroad to Italy and India, from which he brought back extensive film and photographic documentation (later included by E. Klos in three films).
After co-operating in the film Crisis by director Herbert Kline, dealing with the German annexation of the borderlands, he spent the period of February to June 1939 in Paris fleeing from fascism. Here, as a sudden refugee at the moment of the outbreak of conflict, he turned once again after many years to photography and the result was an exceptional series of photographs, which seemed to depart from the heritage of the photographic avant-garde. At the end of 1939 he departed via London for New York, where he began to co-operate in further projects with H. Kline, including a film to the libretto of J. Steinbeck - Forgotten Village.
In 1942 he became acquainted in Hollywood with Eleanor (later Maya) Deren and together they made one of the foundation works of American independent films - Meshes of the Afternoon. In Deren's further films he participated as editor and technical adviser. The meeting with Maya Deren resulted in more than one key work of independent cinematography and also in a large series of civilian portraits, nudes and also arranged photographs inspired by their joint film work.
In 1943 Hackenschmied moved, this time permanently, to New York. He gradually implemented himself independently as a director, cameraman and editor of documentary films and then in the course of the sixties and seventies, together with Francis Thompson, as a pioneer of technically demanding film formats (IMAX). In 1965 their film To Be Alive! won an Oscar as the best short documentary (Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject). When making his last film, On the Wing, he returned twice to Prague for the last time in 1986.

Although Hackenschmied devoted only a few years intensively to photography and later at least occasionally, from the point of view of the history of photography his photographic works is very closely connected to his film work and cannot be completely separated from it. There thus spreads before us a sequence of pictures that belong among those, which prefigured the culture of the main part of the century, based as it was on pictures to a hitherto unseen extent. His photographic work, however, still speaks out independently, with justified self-confidence and ever-amazing lightness.

Pavel Vančát

Jan Raba - In a Different Time

9 January - 8 February 2004

Private viewing on Thursday 8 January at 6 pm
Exhibition to be opened by Josef Moucha, musical performance by Theo Kampfer.
The curator of the exhibition is David Korecký.

The Photographer in the Garden - Josef Sudek Studio would like to invite you to an exhibition of work by Jan Raba entitled In a Different Time. This exhibition of photographs, made up of a selection of the author's cycles Still Life with Fruit, Picture of a Place, Peaceful Things, Sequences and also In a Different Time (all made between 1998 and 2001), is the first showing Jan Raba's work in Prague. The names of the different parts of the exhibition lead you to understand that there will be a contemplative atmosphere in Sudek's garden studio in January.

Jan Raba was born in Týniště nad Orlicí on 17th March 1943. Josef Sudek, in a replica of whose workshop Jan Raba is now exhibiting, turned forty-seven on that day. Raba's photographs certainly stand out here - for the right reasons, which we can see at first glance. Like the two-generations-older Sudek, Raba devotes his attention to classical genres, such as still lifes, landscapes and also portraits. But the whole thing is more complicated, and therefore more interesting.
A carefully prepared catalogue to this exhibition, the curator of which is David Korecký, was published last year. This was enabled by the Art Gallery in Náchod, the town where Jan Raba has lived since the 1960s. The volume contains commentaries by Tomáš Pospiszyl and Jan Kapusta junior, who was the curator of a retrospective in Náchod. In the catalogue you can find more detailed information about Jan Raba's work, his exhibition and print activities and his work in cycles and sequences over three decades.
Raba has been taking pictures since his childhood and also trained as a photographer, which led him to return to it repeatedly after further education and various problems in other jobs. Although there is no continuity in the sense of him being creative constantly, this is no lack of an unbroken internal thread. In his case the breaks are not dead time, as the author's development as a human being continues during them.
There are fine differences with the work of Josef Sudek. Raba is interested in phenomena that we would not expect from Sudek, for example the diagonal composition of a wall painted with a roller (Staircase, 2000). A clearer innovation is the concept of a series of pictures which follow either transformations in a selected motif over time (Aging of Fruit, 1998) or are views of a place taken from various angles (Deserted Orchard, 1998). However, I regard the most important things as those which link Raba and Sudek.
The work on display was clearly created with a great deal of care. The first of Raba's photographs to be exhibited in 1957 were taken using a plate camera. By the way, he was given the camera by his father, which I think is a sign of one of the characteristics of good family. Without the precision of the shots, he could not have achieved the effect he did, which makes the pictures attractive for viewers, amongst other things. It becomes a stakeholder in the meaning of the photographs, as it is the bearer of the message.
All the simple motifs - whether shown by Sudek or Raba - are certainly not mere passing observations. On the contrary. The well-thought out photographs stick to their themes like glue. They are a confession of awareness of the passing nature of life. They attract the viewer's attention not only to the pictures themselves, but they also turn it from the photographs to our life in the world as such. Jan Kapusta junior rightly points out the existential grounding of the exhibits.
The Josef Sudek Studio is reviving work in genres which are often forgotten in the current hectic round of exhibitions. The In a Different Time Exhibition of work by Jan Raba paradoxically proves that their message is perhaps even more urgent.

Josef Moucha

Zuzana Knězeková, Soňa Sadloňová a Jana Znášiková - "SVETLOFÍLIA"

21 November 2003 - 4 January 2004

Private viewing on Thursday 20 November at 6 pm
Josef Sudek Studio, 30 Újezd, Prague 1

An exhibition of three young slovak photographers who graduated last year at VSVU in Bratislava by the profesor Milota Havrankova.
Curator: David Korecky, text for exhibition: PhDr. Eva Trojanova.

Man and Space

Although Zuzana Knezeková, Soňa Sadloňová and Jana Znášiková, recent graduates from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Fine Arts in Bratislava, initially chose the above title for their exhibition in the studio gallery of Josef Sudek in Prague as a working name only, they later made it more specific by calling it "Photophilia". I think it clearly expresses the nature of their art, in particular the core issue of space - a central question for every artist. The question of space is actually in the focus of all visual arts, irrespective of whether they deny it or look for new expressive means and relationships for it. Thus, we must logically ask what the pieces of art presented by the young photographers add.

I would not like to worship or condemn youth because it is neither a merit nor a permanent condition, yet many young artists typically and somewhat demonstratively topple traditional procedures, often identifying the means, i.e. the tool, with the end of the process, i.e. the artifact. Of course it is impossible to place an equality sign here. We might expect young authors, with the photographic medium predestined for this, to fall headlong over current digital technologies, allowing for various visual effects and magic. But surprisingly (or perhaps not) they remain with their feet on the ground, while trying to convince us by not only knowing their "craft" but also by being able to present their views about working with the object lens. They have chosen a simple and classic means, which means light in photography: luminography, perhaps attractive because of its simplicity. Since a camera lens open long enough allows you to work with the image in multiple layers, using the game of chance, the resulting impressions may be more convincing than theatrical, or an artificial looking arrangement like in a theater. In any case, it very often has the charm of the unwanted. All three artists more or less build on a certain kind of almost documentary realistic photographic record, which is possibly a common aspect of their artistic interests. Examining them further, we can discern their individual differences of opinion and emotion - their respective perceptions of space, work with light, and understanding of the facts in a given context.

The collection of photo-objects by Zuzana Knězeková has a traditional title: "Panorama". The true object of her interest is the classic panoramic view of landscape; landscape as man's primary living space with all the good and bad it brings. How does the author handle it? How does she perceive this "living space"? She divides the landscape image into three parts. In the center there is the normal view, also in the context of the figural motif, and on the sides she has made space perception rather special. She interprets it as diffusing layers in various colors, which at the same time defocus the given image. She creates this effect by stacking layers of multiple transparent foil of a given motif. The question of space perception becomes indefinite because its movement puts its basic perception in doubt: what we see is not really as we see it. What about the panorama? The author may not have asked such questions, but in any case the audience may perceive it because she suggests possibilities of viewing the "traditional" image of reality differently.

Soňa Sadloňová in her photo-object series of "Gates" most effectively uses the principle of luminography and long exposure. Her primary photographs document a series of trivial metal garage gates, garages that at first sight referred to the uniformity of our society as we experienced it everywhere not too long ago. Much has changed but the metal gates remain as mementos. What is behind them? Only after being opened do they reveal the original stories of particular people because the interior bears the owner's seal. The space obtains its unequivocal qualities. We in particular perceive the contrast formed by the closed gate and the interior after we open the gate - maybe an unexpected interior. For example, it may serve as a dwelling, possibly for students. Yet the interior can be more than a garage interior; this concept extends and diffuses in the question of what the interior actually is? Also the author suggests the relationships of other qualities by working with the light, which actually suppresses the real nature of the interior itself. By using colored lights and long exposures, she changes the real interior into a kind of magical space. The nature of her photo-objects - miniature gates that open into which we can peer inside, evoking connotations of wing altars that are keeping secrets. The secrets of modern men may not have such a sacred nature, yet they are no less mysterious.

Jana Znášiková has also chosen a classic artistic theme besides the landscape: the portrait. She calls her series "Personal Stories", not her stories, mind you, but those of the persons portrayed. If one of the authors' common characteristics is space (e.g. landscape, garage interior), Znášiková has made her portraits in the same interior. The result of the dual view of the portrayed person is the gap, or the difference between a natural portrait in an unspecific space and a photograph of the same person in his/her own real context, in the world that the person himself experiences. The portrait, despite its frequent effort to be introspective, may, in the end, be very indefinite; yet a photography comprising personality attributes uncovers a world for us that we cannot see at first sight. Znášiková formally answered this question by using a different visual design because she presents the world of the portrayed persons using slides in small boxes, which the visitor needs to look at through a special ocular glass. At the same time, the author evokes in the audience a feeling of entering into the portrayed person's intimate sphere, a kind of thirteenth chamber that is not accessible to everyone.

Unknown, unrealized, mysterious, forbidden, all these attributes are attractive for the visitor and motivate him to look at the exhibited pieces of art a little bit closer. The young artists will surely attract audiences by the fact that they have not set out to astound at any cost. They perceive the real world as something that certainly does form the basis of our world and art, but which does not, however, prevent us from longing to "touch the stars".

Eva Trojanová

Antonín Horák - Photographer of the town of Zlín

19 September - 2 November 2003

Antonín Horák was born in 1918. In 1935 he entered the Zlín Studios (Zlínské ateliéry) and worked there alongside such photographers and cameramen as were Alexandr Hackenschmied, Jan Lukas and Karel Ludwig. In 1936 he assisted Josef Sudek on the photographing of the Baťa Works. He co-operated as a cameraman with Karel Zeman and Hermína Týrlová.
In the photographic work of Antonín Horák we can find the influence of pictorialism, new materialism and also surrealism.
The Prague exhibition is a concentrated and intimate reprise of Horák's retrospective Zlín exhibition. Nudes, landscapes and portraits from the thirties to the fifties will be displayed.
A retrospective catalogue has been published for this art project.

"Horák's photographic pictures of Zlín in the thirties and forties are splendid and artistically perfect, works exceptional in their atmosphere. From everyday rainy moments of Zlín he created poetical magic, a beautiful experience… His photographic portraits of the thirties belong to the pinnacles of the period portrait culture of Czech photography."

Pavel Dias
Text from the catalogue Antonín Horák - Photographer of the Town of Zlín

More information on the project:
www.diosgallery.com
More information on the Prague exhibition:
David Korecký, Tel.: 606 666 242

Jaroslav Rössler - Early Abstractions

13 June - 27 July 2003

Jaroslav Rössler is the pioneer of purely photographic abstraction and is therefore one of the outstanding representatives of visual arts of all time. A corpus delicti has been gathered at the exhibition titled Jaroslav Rössler: Early Abstractions.
Jaroslav Rössler (25 May 1902 in Smilov - 5 January 1990 in Prague) was an apprentice at František Drtikol and Co. from 1917 to 1920, where he also met his wife, Gertrude Fischer (1894 - 1976). The couple then moved to Paris in 1927 (after staying in the city over the Seine briefly in 1925). In July 1935, Rössler was arrested while taking pictures of demonstrating civil servants. His German surname was allegedly the reason French police authorities expelled Rössler from the then retreat of Euro-American culture.
Rössler's post-war work is close to the orientation of a younger generation, refusing the figurative art that followed the Socialist Realism, a binding doctrine in what was then Czechoslovakia. The continued retrospective, titled Jaroslav Rössler: Experiments of the 1950s and 1970s, is a worthy comparison with the works of other leaders of that movement. However, in the 1950s, Rössler resumed his revelations of the early 1920s, when he approached the issue of original photographic abstraction. He also occupied himself with drawing, collages or graphic poems, creation of posters and typographic designs. In the 1920s, he developed a rectangular lens adapter, thanks to which it was possible to expose mingling reflections. Next year, Rössler's exhibition triptych in the Studio of Josef Sudek will be concluded with the planned collection of Jaroslav Rössler: Reflections.
In early 1920s, Jaroslav Rössler presented innovations in expression, comparable to those of František Kupka (1871 - 1963) in painting, claiming world supremacy by exhibiting his abstraction during an Autumn Salon in Paris in 1912. Even though Rössler is a prominent figure, the fact that abstraction, unusual in photography of his era, was his continuous expression from the mid 1920s to the late 1970s, has never been exclusively reflected in literature (e.g. in professional magazines).
Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882 - 1966), Man Ray (1890 - 1976), Christian Schad (1894 - 1982) and László Moholy-Nagy (1895 - 1947) are generally recognized as the pioneers of abstraction, followed by others. However, Man Ray, Christian Schad as well as László Moholy-Nagy abstracted with the use of photograms. No matter how novel their topics and technological methods were, they never broke the traditional uniqueness of manual painting. Photograms come into existence as a shadow play of items laid directly on photosensitive material. And when paper used to be applied instead of film, the result was impossible to copy without losing its quality. Man Ray made use of his invention of this technique in 1922. Before him, the same technology was used by the Dadaist Christian Schad, presented under the title of schadography. Only Paul Strand (1890 - 1976) and Alvin Langdon Coburn anticipated Rössler towards the end of the 1910s by abstracting with the use of a camera. However, strictly speaking, these were just single experiments and mere illusions of abstraction. Their themes were based on subjectivity and their photographs never got beyond materiality. For his creations, similar in principle but aesthetically unique, Rössler created paper constructions or other models - and he also developed abstract creations with the use of photograms ... These are originally cultivated positions that the exhibition avoids, to be able to present just the latest, revolutionary - and virtually ideal - diversion of Rössler's imagination from the photography of ordinarily shared realness. However, Rössler was not a confessor of self-contained formal ideas and he sought out possible ways of communicating with the outside world. This also influenced the tone of the author's self-portrait.
The revolutionary character of Rössler's views of light sources - motion during exposure and a transformed combinations of lenses - was based on the fact that photographs were considered as multipliable, a fact accepted by the avant-garde, not as unique objects. While many of the author's photograms are typically missing, it was possible to create a collection of Early Abstractions and other sets particularly thanks to the kind care of the family and the interest of the Studio of Josef Sudek, organizing the triptych - Photographer in the Garden. The first collection focuses on the 1920s, represented by sixteen pieces, i.e. almost all pure luminous compositions that survived in negatives. Some of the alternatives that do not enrich the basic morphology have been left out. We are witnesses to Rössler's continuance in the primarily constructivist transformation of a classical genre of still-life into a series of variations. Two photo-abstractions document morphologically varied visions of the early 1930s, one photograph originated in 1947. New positives were processed by Sylva Vítová - Rösslerová, the author's daughter. They are the projection of entire negatives on standard photographic formats without, however, simulating the originals. The artefacts have no names and were identified only with dates provided in literature. In some cases, it was difficult to decide on the side orientation of Rössler's images, as he himself sometimes varied in his interpretation of negatives. This is why the orientation differs in some publications, as do the dates.
The Studio of Josef Sudek at Újezd 30 in Prague's Lesser Side will present the collection of Jaroslav Rössler: Early Abstractions, from 13 June to 27 July 2003.

Josef Moucha, exhibition curator

Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák - "Ignace"

25 April - 8 June 2003

Private viewing on Thursday 24 April at 6 pm
Josef Sudek Studio, 30 Újezd, Prague 1

From 25 April, the Josef Sudek Studio will be presenting an authorial selection of an as yet unexhibited collection of black and white photographs of Czech photographers Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák, titled Ignác. The photographs were taken between 1998 and 2001.
After several photographic cycles where the authors focused on details of cities and interiors, un-picturesque images of Czech villages and above all the striking Krajiny (Countryside) depicting the open and almost cleared horizons mainly from the Polabí region, these photographs take us back to the city, to Prague. The seemingly uncertainly composed, sometimes unfocused images of Prague buildings might remind us of the first photographers' old pictures. It is an ironic walk through the Prague architecture.
The exhibition is open until 8 June.

Gérald Assouline - On the Baltic borderlands

Mar 7 – Apr 21, 2003

Private viewing: Thursday, 6 March, from 18h00

The exhibition will be opened by the author with an improvised musical performance “Tango Baltico”

Josef Sudek Studio, 30 Újezd, Prague 1, 118 00, www.sudek-atelier.cz

  The Josef Sudek Studio is exhibiting work by the French photographer and sociologist Gérald Assouline, whose sociological research brought him to the Baltic region  for the last three years.

It is a subjective document, whose poetry emerges from uncertainty, concerning the place and time in question. Assouline does not answer these questions. The atmosphere of  the exhibition is created by the photographs from „ghost town“, Karosta, Lithuania, an abandoned military harbour, empty after the russian army left.

   The author’s biography:

He has been working as a development expert (specialist) since 1984. He has taken part in programmes concerning organisational support for small to medium sized business owners and agriculturists in Europe and even in Central and Southern America. In 1987 he created the first photographs of the homeless in Brazil.

   From recent exhibitions:

”Interior – Exterior”, December 2000 – January 2001, Eliane Poggi Gallery, Geneva ”Borderlands”, Galerie Image in Aarhus (Denmark)

”Impressions from the Baltic borderlands in winter”, organized by the Lithuanian Union of Art  Photographers, June, 2002, Vilnius, Lithuania

”Impressions from the Baltic borderlands in winter”, within the framework of monthly photographs organised by the French Ambassador, December 2002, Riga, Latvia

”On the Baltic borderlands, summers, winters”, Josef Sudek Studio Gallery, April 2003, Prague, Czech Republic

   Exhibitions in preparation:

”Impressions the borders of the Baltic borderlands, summers, winters”, Le Bleu du Ciel Gallery, Lyon, France

(more information on the author at www.qap.fr)

   The author’s commentary on the exhibition:

    This is the story of a personal journey of discovery within the borderlands of Europe, on the north-eastern side of the Baltic Sea. It is motivated by the desire to lose oneself, living on the border of one’s own capacity. To go there, where what we regard ourselves to be, does not apply.

   In these bordering lands between the East and West, which are a mosaic of the past and present, one can have the impression as if you were ”nowhere”. You perceive the presence of Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Russian, German or the absence of Yiddish.

    These newly independent states, where national identity is gradually being renewed, are a visible crossroads of cultural, social and language barriers emerging from the relationship between the various populations of Lithuanians or Latvians and the Russian speaking population.

    The work is primarily a subjective documentary. Impressions, discoveries, walks and meetings, that ascend in the form of a gradual bewitching in visual depiction of one’s own specification of Lithuania and Latvia.

The faces, smiles, silences, landscapes, which seem strange, draw nearer and become unexpectedly close (without one being aware of it).

Watcher – the traveller changes into a cat on his own window..

Gérald Assouline

DRAGAN DRAGIN – “Planet of Shepherd”

17. January – 2. March 2003

Private view at 6 p.m. on January 16, 2003

The exhibition is open daily from 12 to 6 p.m. until 2. March 2003. Closed Mondays.

Josef Sudek Studio, Újezd 30, Prague 1  

The shepherd symbolizes constant wakefulness and protection. He’s often likened to the sun that sees all. He always watches the sky, sun, moon and stars. He anticipates changes of wind, and like a sailor he steers his flock.

He knows the meaning of every sound. His senses are guided by wisdom sharpened by every day co-existence with the beauty and cruelty of nature.

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 Josef Sudek's Studio presents eight diptychs: portraits of people paired with "portraits" of landscapes. They represent a selection from a large cycle of photographs by Dragan Dragin made in 2000 - 2001 in the Durmitor Mountains of Montenegro. The exhibition is accompanied by a small catalogue and a short film, which was created by the artist in the same period as the photographs.

 Dragan Dragin is a photographer originally from Yugoslavia, living in Prague.

He studied at the University of Social Sciences in Yugoslavia and then photography art at FAMU in Prague.

He is a co-founder of and lecturer at the BARTcentre for Performing Art Research in Montenegro and the Czech Republic. During the Balkan wars in the 90’s he produced a number of photographic cycles and video films on Balkan rituals with the support of UNESCO.

Dragin has worked as a lecturer at the Duncan Centre in Prague; he is a collaborator on a number of international projects in the area of dance and performance. Dragin has exhibited in Prague, Brussels, Lier, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Amsterdam, Paris, Arles, Rome and has received a number of international awards.

  contact: dragandragin@hotmail.com

www.sudek-atelier.cz

sponsored by PPF

The cycle “Planet of Shepherd” revolves around expressive faces set in and against the landscape in which they live. Visual discipline, pureness of form and attitude all help to mediate the authenticity of the life of shepherds who even in the 21st century live in harmony with nature. In this respect the author’s attitude is very straightforward and intimate. The photographs present a suggestive picture of life deeply influenced by the surrounding landscape.

“Planet of Shepherds” is a part of Dragin’s photographic work centred on Balkan rituals within the framework of long-term research carried out by an independent group of artists and the BARTcentre in Montenegro. Beginning with the project “Landscape as Faith”, the BARTcentre started an international cultural initiative whose aim is to help the integration of the Balkan people using creative work, summer schools, art workshops and performances with the participation of local inhabitants.

In the past, Dragan Dragin has created a number of photographic collections for several theatres. His photographic cycle “Diary of Silence” received recognition in France. The author is a talented photographer interested in art-oriented documentary photography whose work bears the mark of a deep personal and emotional involvement.  

Pavel Dias, Senior Lecturer

Department of Photography, Film Academy of Prague

22 November 2002 – 12 January 2003

Josef Sudek Studio, Újezd 30, Prague 1

   When, almost two years ago, artist Jindřich Vávra (1928-2001) passed away tragically, his extensive body of work almost ended on the garbage heap. Fortunately, a group of his pupils saved some of the work, and they are now exhibiting, in co-operation with the Josef Sudek Studio Gallery, sixteen of Vávra’s photograms from the years 1963-65. These photograms were exhibited for Vávra at Mánes in the year 1965 by Jiří Kolář himself. However, since the beginning of the seventies they had been hidden from public view in Vávra’s apartment. We now have the chance to recognise one of the lesser-known chapters of Czech photographic history. The photogram technique, which works with photographic chemicals but does not use a camera, is often excluded from the photographic family and thus unjustly remains of marginal interest as uncommitted experiments with photographic paper. As the cycle of Vávra’s photograms shows, this technique brilliantly suits the expression of timeless and spaceless structures which other techniques would have much greater trouble achieving. The exhibition is accompanied by a showing of the documentary “A brief glimpse into the studio of Jindřich Vávra”, filmed shortly after Vávra’s death.

   In his work, Vávra followed all of the known changes in creative thinking in the second half of the twentieth century. His early attempts at painting experimented with certain expressional means of the “isms” in the first half of the 20^th century, then suddenly approached the creative work characteristic for the rising Czech informel. Painting, however, was not meant to become the core of his creations and the experimenter’s attention soon turned to other areas.

   At the beginning of the sixties, he developed the photogram technique, enriched it with contemporary structural elements, and in 1965 exhibited his photograms at the Mánes Club of Creative Artists. At the same time, he gradually created the concept of “found abstraction”, parallel to Duchamp’s ready-mades. Slowly and laboriously, he constructed an assembly of consistently new discoveries. The development continued for many long years and never stopped. At the beginning of the seventies, he finally stopped painting, but even before this, he had started supplementing his paintings with found items. He thus disturbed the traditional format of art work and changed it into a secondary assembly, which is simultaneously a denial and a completion of the former painting. Unlike traditional, compact works of art, which rely on a certain effect, his assemblies remain intentionally non-conformist and their effect is unforeseeable. They are more like configurations of random elements than sculpturally reworked amalgams. They do not affect their location in any other way then by simply occupying it with their presence. Their effect is secondary, because their whole is the result of addition and their materials are secondary raw materials. This is poetics of remainders, supplements, references and links, which in its introversion escapes and masks itself with its strikingly sovereign, yet incomplete, parts. It suggests the incompleteness of individual daily needs and the impossibility of creating a higher whole from them, the purpose of which would be human need as a sum of the array of the objects used. The objects are used, but they remain unused, because much greater skill was invested in them than any of them can regain through purposeful use. Vávra’s assemblies, therefore, are not machines for the absolute, but factories for the concrete.

   Vávra did not hesitate to pass on his creative method to his pupils. As a teacher at the Popular School of Arts, in March and April 1988 he organised a series of artistic works together with the children, under the name of “Stocking flowers heading towards May”. Children dressed in body art moved around land art through environmental art. The teacher does not interfere directly into DADActivities, only leads them peDADAgogically and documents the entire event. Vávra’s class was indistinguishable from his apartment and cottage, overgrown with assemblies and snowed under by children’s artwork. Everything in art can be recycled. The class, apartment and cottage serve as a depository and museum, but they are primarily recycling factories, laboratories for untried reactions.

Text by Petra Šourek from the FANTASTIC SUPER ATTACK ART BOY – Jindřich Vávra catalogue. Graphic design by Eva Holá, published by Gema Art.

 This exhibition is realised with the assistance of the Vavrum Civil Association (www.vavrum.cz)

www.sudek-atelier.cz

The founder of the Studio is PPF, the operator is Gema Art