Josef Sudek: Topography of Ruins

Prague witnessed several dramatic events during the final months of the Second World War. The February air raid in 1945 as well as the Prague Uprising in May 1945 transformed the historical center and turned many buildings and cultural monuments into rubble. The photographer Josef Sudek (1896-1976) recorded the tragic outcome of these events. His postwar topography of Prague is a record of the wounded landscape of the city. The technical advances of the 1940s had already made posssible rapid-fire, dynamic reportage shots. By comparison, Sudek offers us static, impeccably composed photographic images that can be read on multiple levels, as elaborated by the essays in the present book by contributors Adam Havlík, Amy Hughes, Mariana Kubištová, Vojtěch Lahoda and Katarína Mašterová.