JOSEF SUDEK: PERIPHERY

Curator: Jan Mlčoch
Graphic design: Štěpán Malovec

The photographer Josef Sudek (1896 Kolín – 1976 Prague) devoted himself to Prague for many years. Alongside its popular areas steeped in beauty and romantic charm, he was also attracted by its periphery – a fringe world, harsher and poorer, and closer to his nature. The war invalid Josef Sudek had a strong feeling and understanding for the poor and the suffering, he supported various groups and needy individuals. The periphery theme appeared in his work from as early as the 1920s. A number of his contemporaries also documented the living conditions of the lower strata of society – an interest reflected in the international collective exhibitions of social photography held in 1933 and 1934.

Modest dwellings, oftentimes still surrounded by animal sheds, rabbit hutches, chicken coops and small glasshouses, were common not only on the plains of Pankrác, in Troja (the Bosna settlement), in Jinonice (the Mexiko and Arizona settlements) and in Vysočany (the Čína and Obecní kolonie settlements) but also in the area of Židovské pece in Žižkov, and elsewhere. Slum communities also became subjects of books, as in novels by František Langer and Karel Čapek, and works by numerous painters of the Umělecká beseda artists’ association. Although Sudek lived in a studio on Újezd Street in the centre of town, it had the character and facilities of social housing. He need not have lived that way, it was his own personal choice. However, his modest living conditions enabled him to concentrate wholeheartedly on his work and his penchants.

He photographed the periphery most systematically in preparation of his monumental book Prague in Panoramas published in 1959. At the time, he was assisted by two young men – the son of his architect friend Otto Rothmayer and the native of Pardubice Jiří Toman. Photographs have survived that he did not incorporate into the book. This exhibition presents the periphery both as an important part of Sudek’s lifelong oeuvre and as a testimony to the photographer’s social awareness.