Photographer Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek is a cult photographer, originally from the Czech Republic and known for his shocking and daring work, which has been shown in more than 400 cities around the world. He can also be called the most famous Czech photographer in the world.

The style of the photographer Saudek is daring, extreme and daring, and the train of scandalousness has been following him since the socialist times. However, at that time the artist's very appeal to nudity was considered the most radical. In those days, Jan Saudek's works were devoted to the themes of motherhood and fatherhood: tender infant bodies against the backdrop of athletic figures of fathers or equally seductive forms of mothers. “Let it be a shame to the one who thinks badly about it” - this is how one can characterize the works of Jan Saudek of that time. But the most famous for him, of course, brings erotic photography.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Jan Saudek's works took the form of a diptych - the same characters appear both clothed and nude. Moreover, the sitters who appeared in his works were completely far from the classical ideas about the beauty of the human body. And the photographs themselves create a feeling of peeping, not contemplation, but at the same time they are not shockingly explicit. After all, the works of Saudek themselves are most often painted with implausible aniline colors, the characters are made up, the plots are staged and even bizarre.

Jan Saudek's photographs are ambiguous, and the sources of inspiration for them are such directions as classicism and surrealism.

Jan Saudek was born on May 13, 1935, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to a Jewish family. Many of his family members died in the Terezin ghetto during World War II. Jan and his twin brother Karel were imprisoned in a children's camp. Jan's brother - Karel - will later become a comic book illustrator.

As a child, Yang studied music, and in his youth he seriously thought about a musical career, but he was not destined to become a musician.

At the age of 15, he first took a camera in his hands, and photography will become his vocation for life.

From the mid 1950s to the 1980s, Jan Saudek worked in printing houses. And his own recognizable style of photography has appeared in his works since 1959 - bright and vivid photographs painted in sepia.

In 1963, he decided to seriously engage in photography, and soon, in 1969, he went to the United States. Then he returns to Prague. Since the 1970s, he began to enjoy fame in the West, and in 1983 the first book about his work in English was published.

In 1990 Jan Saudek was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters.