"Z cyklu Procházky – Kouzelná zahrádka"

from the series "Walks" – Enchanted Garden

gelatin silver print

When Sudek was asked in a 1936 interview whether photography was an art, he replied, "It is not. It is a beautiful craft that requires a certain amount of taste. It can't be art because it depends entirely on things that existed before, namely the world around us." The statement may be a reflection of the numerous commissioned works, but from an overarching perspective, it reflects the dilemma of photography at the time as a whole.
At a time when photography first had to emancipate itself as an artistic medium from the merely artisanal, Sudek's work oscillates in its ambiguity between the 19th-century demand for documentary rigor on the one hand and the urge for subjectivity and eccentricity on the other. Only in the last period of his work did Sudek find the variety of pictorial languages that constituted his true essence. His significance derives precisely from this: Like no other photographer of his time, he made all these contradictions in his person evident and at the same time fruitful.
(Anton Medrela)