Josef Sudek – Photographer of Modern Architecture

Altough Sudek was recognized above all for his work as an artist, he always stressed the underlying importance of photography as a craft. Alongside creating his famous cycles of photographs, he also ran a business – a photography studio working on a broad range of commissions (esp. portrait and advertising photographs). From the late 1920s until the beginning of the 1950s, Sudek also collaborated with modern architects and the owners of Modernist buildings. This collaboration gave rise to several hundred images, primarily housed at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, which to date have not been properly researched in detail. Still, they attest to the fact that even when working on commission, Josef Sudek was able to assert his original artistic vision. Presenting a selection of photographs and written documents preserved in Sudek’s estate, the paper will offer insight into the process of collaboration between photographer and architect, and attempt to answer questions regarding whether and in what manner architects influenced the photographic representation of their buildings. The presentation also looks at connections between Sudek’s inde-pendent work and his work on commission, and the role of photographs of architecture in promoting Modernist architecture to the public. Analysis of Josef Sudek’s photographs of modern architecture can also be regarded as a case of the broader subject of photography of architecture in interwar Czechoslovakia, during a period when photography offered a strong response to current trends in architecture.