Jan Saudek - N(sane)FW

. . . .or safe, either,....proceed with care.
Edgy, Intense, Disturbed,....and probably damaged goods,........and a credit to ART.

Jan Saudek (b. 13 May 1935, in Prague , Czechoslovakia ) is a Czech art photographer .

LINK 1) - "Jan Saudek, The Universe In A Cellar"

There are artists that we cannot understand unless we know the places in which they’ve worked. It would be unthinkable to conceive Atget without Paris, Weegee without New York, and Ansel Adams without its enchanting mountains. The bond between Jan and Prague is evident even before confirmation of his biographical dates. The Czechoslovakian photographer has symptomatically not moved from Prague. He won’t be undermined by evil regimes, a sixties and eighties spring repression, the said institutional ostracism. His world is in a studio inhabited by bodies capable of giving life to his incredible stories affection and sex, of fascination and repulsion, of tonic muscles and burning flesh. All of Jan Saudek’s photography is a great theatre.

Born in Prague in 1935, Saudek cultivated his dream to become a photographer since an adult. Self-taught, viscerally independent and hostage of the communist regime, he worked as a photographer for years in the cellar of his house (using the scraped off part of the room as his backdrop), vigorously achieving moral norms and social rules to follow his passion. And he mastered photography, which managed to free his delirium, his indignations: a mental grid, of the heart, of sex. Through his black and white shots (which he began to colour by hand from ’77), a grotesque and intriguing eroticism of his nudes are coarsely shown both in its form and content.

His images explore dreams more than reality, although strongly characterized by bloody subjects always expressed by the person drawn, and by the use of hand coloured images. These images produce a non-realistic and honorific effect on oneself, even if Saudek’s choice was dictated by accidental difficulty of dangerous findings and coloured developments.

His photography has been a celebration of characteristics of human nature since the seventies: human beings, woman, father, mother, lovers and babies and adolescents. The passing of time, birth and death.

more - - - http://www.arcadja.com/artmagazine/en/2008/03/21/jan-saudek-the-universe-in-a-ce...

Life

Saudek's father was a Jew and the family was therefore persecuted by Germans. Many of his family members died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II . Jan and his brother Karel were held in a children's concentration camp near the Polish border. He survived the war and worked for a printer starting in 1950. After completing his military service, he was inspired in 1963 by Steichen's Family of Man to try to become a serious art photographer. In 1969 he traveled to the United States and was encouraged in his work by curator Hugh Edwards .

Returning to Prague, he was forced to work in a clandestine manner in a cellar, to avoid the attentions of the secret police, as his work turned to themes of personal erotic freedom, and used implicitly political symbols of corruption and innocence. From the late 1970s he gradually became recognised in the West as the leading Czech photographer, and also developed a following among photographers in his own country. In 1983 the first book on his work was published in the English-speaking world. Following this, in 1984 the Communist authorities allowed him to cease working in a factory, and gave him permission to apply for a permit to work as an artist. In 1987 the archives of his negatives were seized by the police, but later returned.

Saudek currently lives and works in Prague . His brother Karel Saudek is also an artist, and is now the best-known Czech graphic novelist .
Work

His best-known work is noted for its hand-tinted portrayal of painterly dream worlds, often inhabited by nude or semi-nude figures surrounded by bare plaster walls or painted backdrops, frequently re-using identical elements (for instance, a clouded sky or a view of Prague's Charles Bridge). In this they echo the studio and tableaux works of mid nineteenth century erotic photographers, as well as the works of the painter Balthus , and the work of Bernard Faucon . His early art photography is noted for its evocation of childhood. Later his works often portrayed the evolution from child to adult (re-photographing the same composition/pose, and with the same subjects, over many years). Religious motives or the ambiguity between man and woman have also been some of Jan Saudek's recurring themes. His work was the subject of attempts at censorship in the West during the 1990s.

Some of the works of Jan Saudek have entered popular culture in the West, being used as covers for the CD albums of Anorexia Nervosa (band) ( New Obscurantis Order ), Soul Asylum ( Grave Dancers Union ), Daniel Lanois ( For the Beauty of Wynona ), and Beautiful South ( Welcome to the Beautiful South ).

4 LINKS follow -

RuGuru - masters of photography - Jan Saudek
http://ruguru.livejournal.com/767288.html

LARGE selection of WORK -
Jan Saudek & Sara Saudkova -Picasa link
https://picasaweb.google.com/105174493444623145849/JanSaudekSaraSaudkova

JAN SAUDEK pictures and photos
http://www.listal.com/jan-saudek/pictures

STUFF ( mostly in languages I don't speak,...go find a lady at c u r r e n t who speaks 7 languages to help you out. - heh - )
http://www.ricardo.ch/kaufen/buecher-und-comics/sachbuecher-und-ratgeber/fotogra...

note -Disneyland would FIRE this guy,....be an adult, with a private cubicle, or don't hit the links.

p.s. ------PLEASE don't add any any visual content from the LINKS that are SURE to get this yanked from c u r r e n t , I have chosen images with care. It may seem silly,....but this is the United States of Baptist Dixie,....not Denmark.