Josef Sudek and Czech Photography

Josef Sudek (1896-1976) is Czechoslovakia's best known and influential creative photographer. He worked from the 1910s through the 1960s, producing ethereal landscapes, modernist still lifes, and sweeping panoramas of the city of Prague. Subsequent Czech photographers acknowledged Sudek's pioneering work and contributed, in their own way, to the rich photographic legacy of their country. Among them were the modernists Frantisek Drtikol and Jaromir Funke, the surrealist Eva Fuka, and the contemporary figure-photographer Jan Saudek. These and other individuals working in what is now the Czech Republic created one of the strongest contributions to twentieth-century photography in all of Europe.

The exhibition, a legacy show honoring the late Ted Hartwell (1933-2007), the MIA's Curator of Photographs for more than thirty years, includes approximately seventy-five photographs drawn entirely from the MIA's holdings and the local collection of Harry Drake.

Josef Sudek and Czech Photography