Jan Saudek's Creation

His earliest photos were taken at 195 1. A half-naked man lay on the ground with his arms outstretched, as if to embrace the world. On 1959. Hey, Joe! In the movie, a man with broad shoulders parked his scooter on the Moldo River, as if waiting for something. In the love connection (photo taken at 1960), you can see a pair of young people in jeans lying on the ground like having sex, with their wrists handcuffed together. These pictures strongly show the young man's surging passion, and he doesn't know where to vent his energy. His love for life and his desire for love made him quickly sail the boat of life into the harbor of marriage.

Sodek's photography can be properly explained by the birth of his masterpiece "Life" (shot at 1966): he wants to take a picture of a tall and strong father lovingly holding a young newborn on his chest. At first, he thought a friend who was a weightlifter was completely qualified, but when filming, he found that this person had no feeling about the way his father held the baby. Sodek simply made a model himself, but the result conveyed an amazing message-the intimate relationship between father and son is the core of touching people, which is more important than showing strong muscles.

The photos taken by Sodek after 1970 give the impression that the artist is out of touch with the outside world. In fact, maybe he lives alone-moving into the basement is a subconscious strategy. He just wants to quit the battlefield and avoid the clutches of power. Sodek's challenging personality makes him feel insecure in public life. For example, in the early 1960s, the police confiscated his jeans and forced him to go home in underwear. Today, the Iron Curtain has been opened for nine years. Visitors from overseas find that in his basement, the curtains are still closed, as if the artist's residence is always holding a secret meeting to avoid outside sight.

When people carefully watch some photos he took outdoors, it is not difficult to find that the scenery in the photos is as exquisite as that in the studio. Things in reality will never enter the picture. For example, in his 1975 movie 120km/hr, a steam locomotive sped through a closed intersection; A child is sitting on the railing; The lush thatch and potholes indicate that this intersection has been closed for a long time. The details in the photo reflect almost all the meanings it wants to reveal: passports and traffic were strictly controlled at that time. Sodek knows how to apply realistic scenes to his photos, so as to achieve a surreal effect.

Sodek's photos are always full of epic tragedies: for example, a photo with a commemorative medal in one hand may be a sad friend who lost his wife (the photo was taken at1974); Sadness runs through the love story (photo taken at1974)-a rose inserted in a glass of water gradually opens and its petals fade one by one; A man left without hesitation, and a desperate woman hanged herself (photo taken at1977); All the chaos he caused during his tour around the United States was reflected in a photo of a man hanging on a huge billboard (the photo was taken at 1969). Only once did Sodek give up the way of filming his dramatic life in order to film his father, who stood in the middle of a tombstone in a Jewish cemetery and was in rags. This photo was taken simply and implicitly. In Sodek's increasingly grandiose and dramatic photography world, this is undoubtedly an exception, but the photos are also full of rich sadness (taken at 1974).

For a long time, the Czech Republic has been forced to accept the situation imposed on them by others. Their most important adaptability is to create an illusory and incredible real world for themselves. Sodek, who never thought of emigrating, is a master in this respect. Between 1976 and 1977, he began to decorate small windows with some fantastic scenes, which made people look gloomy and clap. Interestingly, his attempt to color black and white photos by hand began immediately. Anna Fallova believes that the treatment of this color is his confrontation with the so-called nature, while Daniela Morazkova regards it as a complete separation between Sodek and social reality.

Sodek's window painting photos can easily make people think that it is a copy of Joseph Sodek's window in my studio. During World War II, under the threat of Nazis, Joseph Sodek retreated into his backyard studio. He noticed the window of the studio upstairs: through the traces of rain washing on the glass, there were gorgeous white clouds floating. He photographed it and then covered the transparent scene with other photos. This seems to be a mysterious veil between himself and the real world. However, Jon Sodek's thinking eye wandered freely in the ever-changing landscape of window painting, and he fundamentally transformed his discovery in a radical way: through montage, he created an image of a passer-by, the tail gas left by a jet plane under blue sky and white clouds, the moon and stars. However, there is nothing strange about all this: although all kinds of wonderful scenery outside the window are changing, we still see the arrival of our lover and don't see anyone leave.

However, behind Sodek's vitality, there is what Daniela Morazkova called great fear of existence. This is not only because he was in the fear of Nazi persecution of Jews since he was a child, but also because he is of German descent, and his family had to fight for survival in 1954. In addition, for a long time, he has been strictly examined by the authorities as an outsider. In addition, as Daniela Morazkova said, every artist is afraid of losing his creativity and self-doubt and the subsequent decline and death-Sodek takes pictures of his lover Veronica every five years-obviously, this is an artist's struggle against his self-confidence: although time passes mercilessly, he still has to do his best for that wonderful moment in his personal life.