A Review of Kodeka's Works

Prague series plays an important role in Kodeka's works, but he is still not a photojournalist. Kodeka's best works are not works that record events, but works that evoke emotions based on "Kodeka's visual rhythm". The French poet Gottina said, "The world visible to the outside world exists only for me." Kodeka's important work Gypsy is completely "his own Gypsy". Even after he joined the famous "Ma Genan Photography Group", he could not take orders for 18 years-he only filmed for himself. From the structural point of view, Kodeka's picture is an opinion rather than a distress signal-there is no shocking event, unlike pure news photos that are eager to shock the viewer. The audience stared for a long time, and they were entangled in the picture; They accidentally fell into a very cautious trap. When they climbed out, they suddenly realized that it was a copy of life far away from themselves, extracted from their familiar state. This copy directly impacts the audience with its quiet and suggestive power. That kind of "second eye" impact effect is tantamount to suddenly opening the window and facing a gust of wind in all directions.

Apart from the Soviet invasion, there are almost no thrilling scenes in Kodeka's works, and there is no "adventure shooting". But because he uses the refined language of life, his best work is Adventure in Shooting-unforgettable pictures have strict requirements for image language. When you pressed the shutter, an incredible thing happened-it was a misunderstanding. It was Kodeka who waited for the incredible things to happen before pressing the shutter. The background and position are well known in advance. "Mysterious Triangle", Kandinsky marveled at the picture composition of Paul Cézanne's "Grand Bath Map". This is also the usual means of Kodak's business structure. The three points are pulling and clamping each other, and the combination of trade-offs, details and secrets is completed when this "action actor" grabs the previous step. Opportunities will not particularly favor Kodeka, and a certain point is still blank. He will wait for the arrival of imaginary people, dogs, cars and boats. Kodeka is an apostle of photography, a hermit and senior priest in a temple, and a full-time servant of photography. Taking pictures is his festival. The arduous and wholehearted action is to discover-the reality flows to the possibility. Once in place, not only the composition is perfect, but also the self is obtained to the maximum extent because of the coincidence of expectations.

Forests, oceans, squares, streets and lanes, each system has its own natural boundaries. In addition to the internal structure of graphics, the essence of photography is to know where to intercept. Vision is a world endowed by nature, which contains a lot of redundant information; Vision is a washed and complete world created by photographers after elimination. The floating life in the market is the ordinary life of the public. The intercepted life has become an isolated, strange, meaningful and new life because of cutting off the head and tail, front and back. Kodeka is a sentry guarding the border. He closed the pass and took the existence of this scene as his own. Every guardian of thought is an expansion of thought. Life is not interrupted by the interruption of the shutter, and the picture extends to the boundary due to the tension of the intercepted content. We haven't seen a photographer's role more dramatic than Kodeka's. Kodeka needs a stage and a group of actors to perform his plays, plays and tragicomedy. He found these people on this stage in Roma communities in Czech Republic and old houses, cemeteries, docks, ferries, forks, intersections, downtown areas and national borders in Romania, Ireland, Spain and Belgium. So the lights dimmed, the curtains opened and the shutter opened. From the wilderness, from the seaside, from the corner of the stairs, from the shed in front of the iron fence, from the dark and wet stone road, idlers, laborers, injured people, lame people, dissolute young women, men overlooking the white boat on the shore, depressed old people, children who touch idols timidly, silent feasts, riots behind semi-inclined brick walls, all these. They either showed an accidental mood or performed a scene of meeting. Sudden privacy and subconscious actions were forgotten by myself after two seconds.

Kodeka collected all these into an analysis basket. The lonely traveler always looks back at his motherland and lives in a different place, far away. Every sharp sentence and listening to prophetic fables and elegies can't get rid of the fatalistic barcode that is equally applicable to the subject and himself: exile.

Kodeka's works are far from epic. The picture is self-sufficient, and he doesn't depend on the plot. Genius photographers impress people through the rhythm of the image itself. Because of this, they stay away from literary themes and literary associations. If "literature exists because it discovers what only literature can discover", then photography exists because it embodies what only photography can express. The photography language in the modern sense has been carefully arranged by the operator, which makes the imagined world and the seen world appear very smooth. The viewer thinks about a multi-faceted way of entering life related to life, a guiding spirit and an effect of survival and self-help from the image; Or completely at a loss-being at a loss is also a state, and losing a higher-level viewer makes acceptance more possible. Try to look at some pictures in exile:-dogs cross the tracks in a snowstorm. Dogs are a theme that Kodeka has shown many times. In the 1968 incident, the government organized the slaughter of dogs again and again, and Kodeka could not help but notice the anthropological value of this detail.

At noon, a road across the country. Hot summer, hot air rolling, everything is lazy. Several harsh street signs, both actively baked and restrained by strange trees thrown obliquely. Suddenly, a voice, an auditory theme jumped straight from the grass tip of the road, and the continuous reciprocating tremor expanded in the air, constantly, monotonously and degenerated. Cold can freeze people's consciousness, and people's consciousness no longer flows in the heat. There is an old rectangular blanket among the tall weeds. This is the blanket that Kodeka used when she was sleeping outside. Stare at it and every traveler will feel it. Life is hard work and will. Loneliness is an education. The works created by artists in loneliness will also form an education and a deep spur to themselves. Recalling this life, Kodeka said: "I don't think it's important to publish photos. What's important is to be able to take photos ... I always travel alone and sleep outdoors alone. Even if you hitchhike, break up in the morning and meet again at night. I don't know where I will sleep at night. I only think about it when I put my sleeping bag. I demand that I can sleep anywhere. I often sleep outdoors in summer. Stop working when the light is dim. I will start at dawn ... after waking up, I feel in good spirits and think: today may be my last day. ..... My back hurts, and the doctor said it was caused by my lifestyle ... I knew that one day I couldn't live like this ... When I fled to the west, I couldn't speak the language of western countries, and even if I had money, I didn't know how to order in a restaurant. I still can't write. I am an immigrant and a worker. I have lived alone for most of my life, so I will have some unrealistic ideas. I am a slave to these ideas ... at the age of 30, I think photographers will be finished by the age of 40. I may think so to force myself to hurry. Now I'm almost 50, and sometimes I can take good photos. I hope it can continue. But I believe that the period of real creativity is the time when the tension is the highest; If you lose your nervousness, you lose everything. "

So far, we know little about Kudka. However, when we re-examine this blanket with the emotion aroused by his works, we suddenly feel bitter, because we clearly see that the blanket that suppresses the grass is full of ancient proverbs about the fall of the piano and sword, and also full of people's helplessness in the face of limit and ultimate. -Prairie. There are scattered horses in the distance (like that big box as a reference and counterweight). Close-up triangle connects three specious people. Farmers? Youth from other provinces? Gypsy tramp, it's okay. From the composition of the group of people who lie prone, bend over and throw the ball, we appreciate the combination of various phenomena: gravity and detachment from gravity, the rotation of the earth and the reverse movement of man and land, the rotation of the whole and the rotation of a point itself. This painting is Kodeka's Ancient Generals. He is very good at using cohesive forms. The imaginative sense of space is Kodeka's innate talent. The ball in the picture is the end or starting point, and it is a dash in punctuation. Photography keeps things that often happen and are not noticed inadvertently in space. Kodeka's accurate positioning of the ball makes us more aware that photography, an art relying on reality, has become a proof of transcendence and metaphysics in Kodeka. As for the identity of these three people, we are more inclined to assume that they are gypsies. Curly hair, deep corners of the mouth, sharp eyes, a strong and optimistic look in the light. At this point, this concept has become an unspeakable emotion, floating on the grassland in the wilderness.

Czech 1968: The background is a road that extends far below the tall buildings on both sides, and in the foreground is Kodeka's arm with a watch. This is mandatory concept insertion. Watches are visible time made by people, and the hand hanging over the downtown shows this idea: Kodeka's own alienation and invasion of the city. Kodeka took many photos with his body. "I take pictures of my life ... my feet and my watch. When I am tired, I lie down. If I still want to shoot, and there is no one around, I will shoot my feet … I will shoot where I sleep and where I live. This is my self-defined principle ... I don't want to change others or the world. " In the social function and philosophy of photography, Kodeka pays more attention to the latter.

1 Impression is intuition. Kodeka said: "1 Impression is very important to me. I often take a photo where I was standing, and then make any necessary corrections if the situation permits. " For photographers, it is completely intuitive to complete value judgment in an instant. "Intuition, no matter how thin and unpredictable its composition is, no matter how incredible its form is, it is the only criterion for judging truth." (Marcel Proust) Intuition is the focus of emotions, experiences and ideas in life. The blue sheep walked between jumps on the steep path, and the macaques climbed and pranced on the high branches in the forest by instinct. If you don't succeed, you will die. All living things rely on intuition to save people. Intuition can't exhaust everything, but it sends out high-pressure jets in the most important holes.

The important content of intuition is experience. Experience is the purification of impression. Whenever we see that a familiar impression has risen to experience, we press the shutter to frame this "experience" and superimpose it on the previous "experience" that has been dormant in memory for a long time. The more frames you experience, the more opportunities you have to fly to the front frame. There will be no psychological appeal for no reason-the richness of the heart brings opportunities and the richness of visual inspection. Memories, a psychological ruin that no normal person can resist. The works that have been made constantly remind us of experience, which "breaks down the imprisonment of the scope of experience not only in time dimension, but also in space dimension (Walter Benjamin)". Photos let us appreciate the years and get rid of them. It can not only "reproduce the past", but also serve as a dynamic starting point for igniting future memories. When we analyze Kodka, another Czech photographer will appear in our mind. He is Pav Stracha,1born in Prague on February 20th, 944. Russian October Revolution, western philosophy and modernist literary thoughts enriched and blended Prague Thought. Stetcha's works remind viewers of this richness and confusion in many ways. Stecha and Kodeka have one thing in common, that is, they provide a philosophical perspective in their calm and simple narration, and all political enthusiasm and social ideals are drowned out by speculative pictures. The description of individual special things is the life of art. When describing, the more emotional Kudka and Stecha are, the more cold and anxious their styles become. "Worry is far from being an obstacle to action. On the contrary, it is a condition for action. It's the same thing as everyone's heavy responsibility for everyone. This responsibility makes us great even if we suffer "(Sartre). Speculative color and anxious consciousness, Prague, a famous cultural city in Europe in the Middle Ages, "gave birth to generations of writers and artists, many of whom have such characteristics."

Hussla Brazik, a literary critic, commented on Stetcha in the article "A Photographer's Contribution to Czech Issues": "Pav Stetcha is an out-and-out Czech photographer. The photos he took gave us a deeper understanding of his motherland. These photos not only show the true face of Bohemia, but also show how the Czechs themselves view this place. Bohemia is a place where houses will never be knocked down by earthquakes, and elegance and charm are out of place here. Every kind of pity contains a lot of ridicule. Bohemians don't drink to get drunk, but to tell hilarious jokes ... "Czechs know their identity very well, but the problem is that they can't judge whether they are like this from time to time. Because they are a nation that pays equal attention to vision and hearing, they can only ask this question through photography. Pav Stracha does not doubt the characteristics of Czechs. He neither denigrates nor reshapes them. However, he described in detail what others dared not touch. When times are sad, Czechs will spend weekends in their own cabins, whether in the terrible period of World War II or under the iron curtain. Every weekend, they put on old clothes and put on hoes and shovels; I usually wear the work clothes of medical cows, scientists, drivers or shop assistants. Today, Czechs are no longer villagers, but they have never cut off their connection with the land. Work and communication are both roles that Czechs can play with ease. But they need a place to call home, a place where they can take off their masks.

"Pav Scott is just a photographer who stepped onto the stage after his death, and this is also the key to answering the Czech question." "After entering the stage of life", Kodeka and Stracha are both such people. Photography will not be made out of nothing (such as painting), but it records what ordinary people ignore and shows us. We relive and restore the familiar moments in life in strange image moments, and deepen our understanding of this moment. Kundera said: "Novelists are neither historians nor politicians, but explorers of existence." This "existence" is vague in photography, and every moment is deleted to show understanding and go straight to the center of things. The center of this thing is the helplessness of time and space limitation, an answer to man's "existential code" and an inquiry into action and fate. The most striking similarity between Kodeka and Stecha lies in the control of the "intermediate scene". Close-ups cut off the cause and effect, cut off the environment, and make the picture too abrupt. Panorama is miscellaneous and extensive because of its inclusiveness, and it lacks the necessary restraint in the language narration of the picture. The most wonderful works of Kodeka and Stracha are all middle shots. The inevitability of history is immersed in the middle scene.

Put punishment, repentance, forbearance and enterprising in the middle scene. Passion, self-discipline, confusion and expectation are introduced from the middle scene. Mid shot balances art and reality. The middle scene is turbulent and jumping. Firstly, it emphasizes the contingency and uncertainty of characters' behavior, and then leads to the regular factors in contingency and uncertainty, so that art can reach a profound level. There are at least 3 to 12 possibilities for the intermediate scene schema of Kodeka and Stecha. The audience was attracted by the details. They observe details, transcend and perceive details. Of course, these details are often guided by the plot. Kodeka and Stracha like to embed a main plot in the middle scene. From this main plot, philosophical meaning has evolved into a principle of life. Comparing Kodeka and Stetcha, the difference between them is also obvious. Stetchado takes from the existing, while Kodeka takes from the mutation. Kodeka's works are more conflicting and dramatic. Unexplained feelings of depression and pain, clear and indescribable passion are all compressed in one square inch. Kodeka may be reminding himself that the picture full of instant meaning reminds Kodeka of his sensitive and neurotic tendency to drama; He takes pictures like that, and he lives in that instant experience.

Starting from Kodeka, we started one spiritual clue after another on paper. We also want to tell some intellectuals by the way that life can be enriched and released through the eyepiece. Didn't you get some inspiration from Kodeka's clever images? You value knowledge more than wisdom and reading more than experience. In learning, you repeat worse and worse knowledge from generation to generation, and your fresh life is ignored. Imagination is dying. Nature is slowly forgotten. In this way, how can a weak life bear and summon a strong spirit?

At this moment, let's get rid of the dependence on visual facts, mix all the images taken by others in our own lives, and savor life quietly and carefully alone:-the long back with bent braids in the drizzle. The face is unknown, and you both hope and fear that she will turn back.

Next to the haystack, there is a dumb donkey facing the autumn day-your throat is also rolling. A loveless child sent a handful of grass to the white rabbit. He loves himself by loving rabbits, and his sadness becomes soft.

Outside the train window, the nearby poplars swept across the distant village. The early life pictures were cut apart, flickering. You tried to seize yesterday and set a window view, but the turbulent waves could not elaborate on the past. With the growth of age, feelings are getting farther and farther away, and even the sadness of that year has hardened into a jadeite stone. Close your eyes, the stream remains the same: a retrospective touch of the self in existence. At the moment of death, people will experience the end of the world and stop their emotional loss when their consciousness and body are separated. It really chills the living, but it's true.

"Modern ignorance does not mean ignorance, but the blindness of popular ideas." (Milan Kundera) Catering to fashion and pleasing the public is usually pleasing to the eye, which is not seen in Kodeka's works. Kodeka's seagulls are gloomy seagulls, and Kodeka's songs are songs under dead vines rather than under apple trees. Kodeka's photography is not lyrical. Melancholy rationality is the characteristic of exiles. Kodeka firmly rejected the hypothesis of cheap hedonism, and he never tried to make a description that inspired external beauty. Kodka is neither depressing nor exciting. He just showed a quiet fact of life. The fact of this life is revealed by "signs of tremor", and the details of the picture are difficult to solve. The mental fragments of radial cracks highlight the anxiety in the living landscape, the embarrassment and insensitivity, helplessness and obedience in the stalemate. Maybe, specious, the confusion before giving the answer is always tangled. Like Faulkner, Kodeka analyzed "chaotic and turbulent human nature". Describe people's feelings about desert islands and ruins with cool colors, and explain Kodeka's anxiety about people. Except those with split personality and perverse personality, even if they look at the sound appearance, the audience will be disturbed by disappointment, ambiguity, doubt, decline and tragic ending, so that they can't help shouting: "Is this in the sunshine of Lisbon, Dublin, Prague and Ming Can?" In this regard, Kodeka can only be silent. Because the photo is his silent monologue and the only explanation through the lens. The better the photographer, the more he will feel the dilemma of how to explain to the public. "No one there has the truth, but everyone has the right to be understood." Cod verified Kundera's statement.

The indifference, estrangement, absurdity and anonymity of urban life itself have caused the vanity and defense of human behavior. On the surface, alienation is actually what Kodeka fixed on those marginal people in the depths of human nature: they are complete and incomplete, beautiful and ugly, lucky and sad. Kodeka explores the meaning of their lives with vague feelings: these people also want to get small and quiet happiness.

When the great character of human beings flashes on the most humble people, will we ignore it because of the extremely hidden bright colors? Art, a pure spiritual concentration, can pave the way for the free development of the soul?

If we come to the end of exile, only those who travel around the world can get the answers to life questions, then what is the significance of our various explorations in the long journey? We can't hear Kodeka's answer. All I know is that he took his camera to the British Isles and the French countryside. Several new books are being printed. We are some latecomers who took to the streets to learn to shoot after watching Exile and Gypsy. We were tortured by Kodeka. When watching Kodeka in 10 years, we must establish another point of view for ourselves; It's time to open his new book to test this view.