Odyssey to Sudek
By Charles Sawyer
My journey to the gate of Josef Sudek’s atelier in Prague in December, 1975, was haphazard to say the least. Having planned a trip to Prague I asked the editor of the New York photography magazine Modern Photography what I might do in Prague that would interest her magazine. “If you could bring back some Josef Sudek prints we would probably publish them,” she replied. She had no contact information for Sudek.
Sudek was represented in the U.S. by Light Gallery in New York City. A phone call to the gallery yielded a street address in Prague. That was all, a number and a street name. On the morning after arriving in Prague (by train through West and East Germany) I went to the address on my notepad. It was a big building in the heart of Prague. The lobby in the entryway was filled with mailboxes. The name Sudek was not to be found among them.
A stranger entered from the street and I said “Josef Sudek?”. The stranger obligingly pointed to a tall double-doorway. I stepped through and found myself in a large courtyard. Then I saw it: in the middle of the courtyard stood a shed, surrounded by small, crooked trees and a low wooden fence. There was no mistaking it, based on the many photos I had seen taken from behind its windows: the shed was Sudek’s atelier.
Josef Sudek in this studio
December, 1975, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Photo by Charles Sawyer.
The fence had a gate with a doorbell. I pushed the doorbell button and heard a faint ringing, seeming to come not from the shed but somewhere beyond. Getting no answer after several rings, I wrote a note: I’m an American journalist visiting Prague and hope to meet the photographer Josef Sudek. I am staying at the Hotel Europa. I tore the page from my note pad and wedged it in the gate. A futile gesture, I thought to myself, and went on my way.
That evening the phone rang in my hotel room. The voice on the phone said “I’m Anna Farova. I will take you to meet Sudek tomorrow. I can translate for you. Sudek speaks no English.” The next day my new-found benefactor drove me to a steep street leading toward Hradcany Castle at the top of the bluff above.
We entered Sudek’s personal residence, which also housed his darkroom. There was clutter everywhere, but clutter that had a feeling of loose order. And there was Sudek: rumpled, diminutive, his frame crooked, his form lopsided by the absence of his arm. With translation from Anna I explained that I wanted to bring prints back to America for publication.
Sudek explained that he had no prints to spare, that he was preparing for an exhibition in Prague and that his former assistant, now in New York, Sonia Bullaty, could provide prints for publication. He assured me that the prints I might obtain in New York were every bit as good as any he might give me because he had printed them himself. He gave me her address and that was that, business ended—but not my visit. He offered to show me some of the prints he was making for the coming exhibit. One after another he laid down photographs on the only clear surface in the room. Several were taken in the forest. Scenes of large topless tree trunks conveyed the sense of mystery I had come to expect from his images. I recall only one simple exchange between us. “Very beautiful,” I said, looking at one image. “Time will tell,” he replied.
While he and Anna chatted I snapped photos with my Leica M-2. The light was dim. Exposures of f 2.0 1/30th were barely adequate (ASA 400 film). I pulled out my small flash and laid it aside. In response to an inquiry from Anna Sudek went to a corner where shelves were piled with papers and parcels. He bent down on one knee and poked around among the papers. I saw a chance for a photo of Sudek surrounded by his chaotic but orderly archive. He was near the window, but the corner was dimly lit so I turned on my flash unit, something I did very rarely.
Sudek stood up and turned to rejoin us. My flash was not fully charged so I had to guess at the exposure. I knew I had only a second or two to compose and press the shutter. With one hand I pointed the flash at the ceiling, with the other I raised the camera to my eye, composed and pressed the shutter, all in one motion, more or less.
The broad elements of Sudek’s life were well known among Czechs and later in the photography world beyond the borders of his country. But it was not until Sonja Bullaty published her book about Sudek that the depth of his transformation in the wake of his misfortune was revealed. As she recounts in her book, Sudek told of the time he traveled to Italy with his musician friends and found the actual place where he had received the wound that cost him his arm. In stark, personal terms he told of his inability to give up the part he had lost, how he lingered for weeks at the farm where he had been carried from the battlefield, seemingly mourning his lost arm. Finally, when reconciliation came to him, he returned to Prague a changed man, accepting that he would forever be different from ordinary people. Photography became his personal salvation. It was this transformation that led to his becoming a great artist.
Josef Sudek in this studio
December, 1975, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Photo by Charles Sawyer.
Josef Sudek at the exhibit of his photos in Roudnice
Czechoslovakia,
August, 1976. Photo by Charles Sawyer
I met Sudek again when I returned to Prague in August, 1976, just in time
for the opening of an exhibition of Sudek’s photos in Roudnice, near Prague,
in the converted stable at a palatial estate. Generations of Czech nobility
had lived on the estate before the Republic was founded in 1918. Sudek had
never come to his own openings; he was too shy to endure being the center of
attention. This time he made an exception of sorts. He asked to ride to
Roudnice with Anna Farova on the night of the opening, just to see how the
pictures were exhibited. I got lucky–there was room for me in Anna’s car
and I was invited to join.
Josef Sudek at the exhibit of his photos in Roudnice
Czechoslovakia,
August, 1976. Photo by Charles Sawyer
We arrived well before the official start of the opening. Sudek took his
time viewing his photos on display and looked carefully and attentively at
paintings also hung on the gallery walls. Then he retired to the curator’s
office for wine and cheese.
Josef Sudek at the exhibit of his photos in Roudnice
Czechoslovakia,
August, 1976. Photo by Charles Sawyer
Roudnice gallery, office of the Director, when Sudek visit to see his
exhibition.
Czechoslovakia,
August, 1976. Photo by Charles Sawyer
He did not attend the opening ceremony of his
exhibit. Instead, unknown to the guests attending the opening, Sudek sat
peeking over the balustrade of a balcony above the exhibition floor.
Josef Sudek at the exhibit of his photos in Roudnice
Czechoslovakia,
August, 1976. Photo by Charles Sawyer
Coda—Written in the Summer of 2002.
Yesterday, quietly and without ceremony, I found myself completing a journey. It was at the restored studio of the Czech master photographer Josef Sudek. It stands in the inner courtyard of a block of apartments in Prague. It is a wooden shed-like structure surrounded by a small garden. Inside is a tiny, antiseptic gallery. Besides a few printed signs and some photographic artifacts, all that remains to tell you that this was a working space of Sudek are the views through the double-pane windows into the garden. Looking out through these frames you can imagine Sudek under his viewing cloth composing a heart-stopping image.
There was a guestbook with pages of black paper and a white-ink pen. I wrote there: “I first visited this p lace in 1975 and the visit set in motion a chain of events that shaped my life thereafter and continues to shape it to this day. The memory of Josef Sudek, the man, and the artist, remain with me and will remain as long as memory stays with me. This gallery is a fitting tribute to that great artist.”
Charles Sawyer at the studio of Josef Sudek
now a museum, in Prague, Cz. Rep.,
July 2002.
Photo by Josef Agassi.
2002
At the time I could hardly imagine that these circumstances were a coiled spring just released by the fingers of a pinball player and that I was the ball sent rolling up the track, bound for a series of ringing bumpers and chiming latch gates. No. Not true. I could imagine, indeed I yearned for some coil to send me hurtling through life. As the saying goes “be careful what you wish for, because you may get it in the end”. And get it I did.
From my meetings with Sudek came my friendship with Anna Farova and my involvement in Czechoslovak politics as it pertained to the saga of Cold War geopolitics….I returned to Prague in 1978 to get the big story. The Czechoslovak authorities were in a panic—their routine suppression of dissent and artistic liberty had become the focus of Cold War maneuvers. They had a leading playwright in a cell (Vaclav Havel) and Anna had lost her museum position after signing Charter 77, a human rights petition that became the stuff of front page stories in the New York Times. I played cat and mouse with the secret police in Prague and met all the prominent dissidents not under lock and key or house arrest. I even met Jiri Hayek, Dubcek’s Foreign Minister, while he was under guard, though the meeting at his gate was only long enough for a few pleasantries before the secret police led me away and detained me briefly and politely. My accounts of these encounters earned me the status of persona non grata and delayed my next return to Prague for 21 years.
I was hooked, hooked on the heroic struggles of East European intellectuals and hooked on this very benign form of secret agent shenanigans, which a few decades before could have earned me a lifetime in a dungeon, or worse, but at the time of Carter and Brezhnev wouldn’t even rate a night in a cell. I moved on to Poland where I caught the first wave of the Great Fall of the Soviet Empire.
2010, Boston, USA.
see also: “Josef Sudek. The man and his work” By Charles Sawyer