Visiting Prague

Summary: life and work of Jan Saudek the photographer who found art in erotic freedom.

Jan Saudek was born in May 13 in the year of 1935 in Prague son of a bank clerk. Until he was 15 he was able to study but during the events of the II World War he and one of his brother, Karel were sent to a Children’s Concentration Camp close to the Polish border. Although the rest of his brothers and his father were sent to Theresienstadt. His father survived but six of is brothers were murdered.
After the war, in 1950 he started working for a printer. His First camera was a small Kodak and he says: “The only thing you can do with this camera is load the film and press the button to make a picture; that’s exactly what I did until 1963.” Following his work in the printer he was forced to complete his military service and married Marie with whom he has two children called Samuel and David. By this time he got inspiration in Eduard Steichen, a photographer, painter and art gallery and museum curator, to become a serious photographer. In 1969 he gets as a present his first real camera: a Flexaret 6 x 6. In the same year he makes a trip to U.S. of America where he met Hugh Edwards, an influential curator and the Art Institute of Chicago and responsible for the acceptance of the fine art of photography and documentary photography as forms of art. Hugh had recognized great quality in Jan’s work and encouraged him to keep on with it. Here he also has the opportunity to present his work with his first solo exhibition at the University of Indiana, Bloomington.
Returning to his homeland he realizes that Prague was still behind the Iron Curtin where art was not welcome. For that reason and because his work was full of themes of personal erotic freedom, and filled with implicitly political symbols of corruption and innocence, he had to work in a clandestine way in a cellar. In the 70’s he starts to be known in the West and internatinally as the leading Czech photographer developing a great number of followers in the Czech Republic. In the beginning of this decade he also divorced form his wife Marie.
In 1972 he works together with a variety of artists such as Paule Pia (Antwerp and Brussels), Karsten Fricke (Bonn), Marlene and Jean-Pierre Vorlet (Lausanne), Pierre Borhan (Paris), Anita Neugebauer (Basle) and David Travis (Art Institute of Chicago).
In 1977 he travels to France to see “Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie” he get to know Arles and Paris. But it is between 1976-84 that Jan works in collaboration with the Jacques Baruch Gallery in Chicago. The first monograph on Jan was named The World of Jan Saudek and was translated to English, German and French in 1983.
In 1983 his edits his fist book of his work in English and not in the Czech Republic.
Due to his enormous success, in 1984 the Czech communist authorities agree to let him to cease working in a factory, and gave him permission to apply for a permit to work as an artist. In 1984 he sign in the Unity of Czech Artists, whish had ignored him for a long time, but he says: “With my work I am trying to capture all the things I know and love; and above all I would like to leave behind a sign of the times that have elapsed.”
Saudek doesn’t stop growing and stretching his limits. This time he collaborates and exposed his work at the Galerie Torch in Amsterdam and by 1990 with the publishers Art Unlimited of Amsterdam. In 1989-91 its Japans time, he works for the fashion firm Matsuda.
His first rearward comes in 1990 with the when hi is made a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres
Sarah Saudek edits his first book Dopis (Letters), in the year of 1995. By this time his work had changed, he introduced painted elements to his works transferring important motifs from his photographic output to canvas. Two films were produced about this incredible and brave artist. One in 1990 by Jerome de Missolz called Jan Saudek: Prague Printemps, the other is named Jan Saudek: Bound by Passionit was produced in the current year 2008. by Adolf Zika.

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