Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (1896–1976), the most important and most famous of Czech photographers, made his best work when middle-aged, having decided to ignore the rules of modern trends. Whereas his photographs from the time he began his craft till the 1930s are mainly a reflection of the external world, by the 1940s he was returning to himself, finding his own unique creative path. This was the period when he made the famous photos from his studio window and remarkable still lifes, using contact prints of various sizes. Not even the pressures of World War II and the post-war years (including the demands of Socialist Realism) interrupted the continuity of his oeuvre. Instead, Sudek returned to the Pictorialism of his early work, and in a number of his photographs from this period he anticipated the general trend to a post-modern synthesis in photography, becoming a continuous source of inspiration for future generations.