Josef Sudek - The window filter

Chair in Janacek's house 1948

1960

1972


Josef Sudek 1896-1976 a Czech photographer who found his subjects in his domestic surroundings and in particular in the material quality of light as it penetrated windows. The relationship between inside and outside, the gaze of a filtered window is explored in his long series on the Composer Janacek. He remained for most of his life around Prague and contributed to its somewhat melancholy and romantic character. Though much theory has been read into his window views, political, philosophical and psychological, there is a tension within them that seems to reflect a repressed ambition. A very different atmosphere to those somewhat similar viewpoints of Wyeth or Hopper. Despite having lost an arm in the first world war Sudek used a large format camera and preferred always to create contact prints rather than enlargements. Interesting link here to a combined study of the window pieces of Kertesz and Sudek.