Josef Sudek: Reproduction as a Source of Wonder

A factor of paramount importance in the oeuvre of Josef Sudek is the role of lighting at the moment of the exposure of his images. Among other things, his use of lighting provides a clue as to whether the given photograph is a work undertaken on commission or prompted by personal motivation. As can be easily divined, his works on commission are as a rule photographed in “neutral” diffused and bright lighting, whereas works accentuating the artist’s personal vision of things, particularly dating to the period after the early 1960s, employ dimmer lighting and a use of chiaroscuro. Though exceptions are plentiful and the line between the two approaches is blurred, Sudek’s evening and nocturnal photographs are nonetheless among his most famous. The final stage of his oeuvre, however, began with Sudek’s experience of the texture and stunning quality of a photograph (sized approx. 30 × 40 cm) of a statue in Chartres, apparently seen in 1940. No details are known about this work. Sudek’s response to the sculpture was above all the appreciation of an artisan recognizing a superior craftsman, yet it gave birth to an artist when he demonstrated the ability to start anew at a mature age. Adopting the techniques of 19th century photography, he ceased enlarging and would only make contact prints. In the 1950s, he focused on the verism which this technique facilitated, but over time he became increasingly concentrated on the use of light, which co-created both the objects photographed and their image. A reprodution enthralled a visionary spoke to a visionary. As can be easily imagined, the role of light in photographing three-dimensional objects is necessarily of importance. Light, however, also plays a leading role in photographing two-dimensional objects. It was for this reason that eminent artists such as Emil Filla, Jindřich Štyrský and Toyen commissioned Sudek to make reproductions of their work. Sudek’s reproductions conveyed their texture in great detail (their materiality, or “object-ness”), as well as satisfactorily translating their color scheme into the black-and-white range, since Sudek was possessed of a particularly keen sense of the life of color, and the changes of color tonality with lighting. While this is hard to prove, one may demonstrate the significance of lighting in a photograph of the surface of a tombstone covered with inscriptions (from the cycle Labyrinths, 1960 –1970, MG8602).