I remember seeing a book about Sudek and was mesmerised by his vision. I just looked at the work of Jose Ortiz Echague and I don't know wheather to go out and shoot or just throw my equipment in the trash. I now feel so inadequate. His work just put me into a whole new world. Thanks for introducing me to his work.
No, Sudek was not a pioneer, he was one of many great unknown photographers not only unknown here in North America but as well in his native land for many years.
There were photographers with (large format) cameras all over Europe (and Asia). The history of photography is much more than Adams, Evans, Stieglitz and Weston. I am sorry for not mentioning few dozen other american names, but...
Look at birthplaces of people like Andre Kertesz: Budapest, Hungary; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Bacsborsod, Hungary; Brassai - Gyula Halasz: Brasso, Hungary; August Sander: Herdorf, Germany; Jan Bulhak: Ostaszyn, Poland/Lithuania/Russia/Belarus; Edward Steichen: Luxembourg; Weegee -Artur Fellig: Zloczow, Poland/Austria; Yousuf Karsh: Mardin, Armenia; Philippe Halsman: Riga, Latvia; Frantisek Dritkol: Pribram, Bohemia; Jan Saudek: Prague, Czech... and dozens more
Some of them studied and worked their whole life in their homeland or moved to more friendly country in Europe, some crossed the pond and become famous in US as well. Some did not survive because of the wars and we know them as "photographer unknown" credit line under a photo. Of course the LF gear was a standard equipment for many decades for photographers even during forties and fifties.
Read the text at the following link to learn about Jan Bulhak (unfortunately the photos over there do not even scratch the surface of the mountain of his works). And he was one among many others too.
Have you seen Sudek's panoramas of Prague? Wonderful photographs of beautiful city.
What about italian LF photographers? There must be someone besides fictional Paparazzo with "tiny but fast" Rollei. Leonardo with his camera obscura? Oh no, he could not get film from Kodak. How little we know if we keep looking only into our woods.
As for pioneering work- we have our own perception of what was "avant garde", we see works from the past with accumuleted knowledge. What Atget, Sudek, Bulhak or Sander did was hard work to preserve for us what they knew would disappear. And their worlds did vanish from reality, through their photographs those worlds remain in our social and cultural memory. They did not take thise photographs to be pioneers in straight or pictorial photography or to improve eight zone reproduction in printing, they were labourers of their beloved craft on mission to preserve past for us.
I have no reason to believe Sudek was a pioneer for using a large format camera, but he was a great pioneer in terms of vision.
It may be true that we "see works from the past with accumuleted knowledge," and that "What Atget, Sudek, Bulhak or Sander did was hard work to preserve for us what they knew would disappear." But our accmulated knowledge gives us more clarity in seeing what people have seen for decades: that artists like Atget and Sudek photographed the world differently from anyone else.
What does it mattrer that Atget's stated intent was creating a catalog of scenes for set designers? The way he did it was unique, and its degree of uniqueness was illuminated by the world's eventual digestion of European and American modernism.
Sudek likewise, whatever his unpretentious ambitions, gave us a new vision that has inspired at least three generations of photographers all over the world. "Avant garde" means being on the front line, the leading edge of something new. How Sudek got there is an in interesting topic for speculation, but however he did it, there he was.
I tend to agree with paulr, that Sudek was a pioneer in respect to his vision. All the photographers named by Mark C. and Mark Sawyer are certainly excellent-to-superb, but the gist of my question was about LF (I guess that would start at about 9x12 cm or 13x18 cm in the euro-sizes) photographers living and working on the European continent during the early 20th century.
Adding still life and landscapes as parameters, I still see only Sudek and Atget as the stand-outs. Paul Strand almost makes it into the club, but I believe that his residence in France only began in the 1950's. (By the way, U.S. born Strand was of Czech origin too). Sander, whose work I adore, was of course a portraitist. The majority of European photography was —and still is— very 'people' oriented. Sudek stuck to his guns, and while he did take portraits also, his strongest work was in still lifes and landscapes. Ok, that perhaps doesn't make him a "pioneer" , in the strict sense. "Avant garde"? I don't know. . . sounds like he'd have to part of a movement with other artists. He wasn't. "Rebel" doesn't work either, for that word implies intention. I'm not sure what word to apply to Sudek, but everything that I have read and heard about him indicates that he was just a gentle man who just wanted to express himself.
In exercising that simple expression, Sudek unknowingly carved a place for himself, not only in his homeland —where he is now duly appreciated, but in the hearts of those of us who are so receptive to his brand of visual lyricism. Since he was one of the first to affect me in that way, he is at least a pioneer to me personally, in that sense.
According to a book on Sudek by Jan Rezac (Sudek, Slovik Misto Pameti, Published by Artfoto) which I bought in Prague, Sudek used 6x10.5 cm, 6x14.5 cm ("quite a lot"), 13x18 cm ("not much"), 18x24 cm ("quite a lot"), 24x30 cm ("quite a lot"), 30x40 cm —of which he said, "I'd like to use this, but it's rather difficult (don't forget his handicap of being one-armed). He also used an 1894 model of a Kodak 10x30 cm panoramic camera mainly for landscapes. He called it "the sausage". Of it, he said, "I'm trying to do still lifes with it. I've got about four". (I guess he meant four negatives, not cameras!) Sudek used smaller formats too, apparently down to 6x9 cm, but I suspect that his extensive use of LF cameras was due to the fact that they have to be used on a tripod, and therefore may have been easier to operate with one arm. Only a guess.
Lastly, Mark C. wrote a nice phrase about some of the great photographers, saying they tried to "preserve for us what they knew would disappear". Wow. That's a nice motto in general for photography, isn't it? To preserve what we know will disappear, and I'd add: to show someone else what you think is beautiful or interesting.
Go Joe! (Sudek). Vive le grand format!
Oops. Ladies and gentleman, I must confess a double boo-boo. Josef Sudek was born on March 17, 1896
and died on September 15, 1976.
Therefore, you still have plenty of time to buy candles to celebrate his birthday, and light one in a couple of days to mark his passing.
Sorry for the error. I don't regret, however, starting this thread. Very interesting so far.
Vive le grand format!
That's ok ... just throw another party on the 15th. are you Czech, Christopher? Are you familiar with any of the Czech and Slovak photographers doing really interesting work today?
There's a theory that there's a specific species of hallucinogenic mold that grows on grain almost exclusively in a small region of Eastern Europe ... it's been speculated that the character of Czech art has been a product of its influence. Evidence has been the strange, surrealistic mood evident in art from the region throughout the ages, but exemplified most famously in the last hundred years by Kafka and Sudek.
I have no sense of whether to believe this, but if anyone would like to send me a few loaves of Czech bread (and maybe some Slivovitz to chase it down) I'd be happy to eat it all and see if any strange things come out of my camera.
Paul, you're looking for Ergot.
I see symbolism and a willingness to be non-literal with the camera as a characteristic of E.European photography in general. It's interesting to browse an enthusiasts gallery site like photo.net and see how the slavic names often have galleries full of stagey shots with determinist titles. On the finest of fine art side, even Boris Mikhailovich's straighter work has a strong symbolic component.
My guess is that late romanticism never quite died behind the curtain - socialist realism may be to blame - and the more subversive artists the need to misdirect the censor necessarily lead to narrative subtleties.
Romanticism and symbolism are definitely involved, but there's also a sense of strangeness ... a slight twist on the ideas and visual metaphors. Yes, we're seeing some escapist fantasies, as you might expect from behind anything called the iron curtain ... but the nature of these fantasies can seem particularly strange, and rooted in something that seems common to the region.
Probably just cultural, but it's more fun to think they're all tripping all the time.
Ergot has wiped out entire villages in its time. It's why even the most barren, fuel-scarce viking and celtic settlements tended to have a grain kiln somwhere about the place. More grim than trippy.
Another theme I see surviving in E.European visual arts is the pre-romantic view of nature as inherently threatening, in a fey, half-magical sort of way. Bilibin for example seems to me to have an edgyness about landscape that western illustrators had long since got rid of in favour of the sublime or outright cutseyness. Down near Krakow is the last sizable remnant of the European wildwood. I'd love to spend some time there with an LF camera. And Kamchatka. And Carpathia. And the Lena Delta. And the summit of Ushba.
How much land does a man need again?
Frank Beken (http://www.beken.co.uk/history.htm). IIRC he didn't switch to MF cameras until the 1960s...
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