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Jan Saudek (Photobook) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Christiane Fricke, Michael Konze
Creator: Jan Saudek
Publisher: Taschen
Category: Book
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $25.00
You Save: $4.99 (17%)
Used (17) from $25.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 199
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.3
Dimensions (in): 12.2 x 9.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 3822874299
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.28
EAN: 9783822874295
ASIN: 3822874299
Publication Date: September 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
"If a photograph doesn't tell a story... April 25, 2008
... it's not a photograph, I say."
That captures just one side of this complex collection. A child kisses a woman's grandly pregnant belly (p.68) - is that a sibling in there? An older woman (p.94) holds up a picture, apparently of her younger self. A girl displays an injured wrist (p.147), creating a queasy and desperate sympathy for her, whoever she is. A darkly made-up punker in ripped nylons holds a doll (p.58). Somehow, these and many others each capture a stretch of time, as close as last night or as far away as decades gone by.
A number of photos appear in pairs or larger groups. Sometimes, the pictures in a matched pair (e.g. p.112-113) each reverse the sense of the other. A few times, the person or group appears once clothed, then again nude (p.80-81). Nearly all of them carry some sense of decay, one way or another. Flaking plaster forms the most common background, for example. A claustrophobic room with a window looking onto nothing frames another set of pictures. The people themselves often convey decay of some kind, too. "Ballerina" (p.57) shows a strong and shapely figure, with the woman's face seemingly decades older than the body it attaches to. Full figures appear often, ranging up to obese (p.174), suggesting decay of another kind. Another woman (p. 132) just looks life-long tired, her body seemingly softened and veined by her children's demands on it, maybe demands that ended years ago.
Saudek offers plenty of humor, too, from simple expressions (p.158), to seemingly impossible poses (p.160-161), to bawdy picture-pairs where one figure appears with or without the other (p.88), proving that context is everything. Open eroticism appears frequently, too, often mixed with the humor or other mood. Although some of these pictures are black and white, some were taken in color, and many seem to have been hand-colored and modified after the fact. Saudek's unique and often anachronistic vision unifies this set, a visual sensibility that simply has to be seen. If you like your figure models young, pretty, and only hinting at sexuality, you'll find some of that here. That's just a small part of this collection, though. Lots of these models aren't young, some are hard to call pretty, and very few just give hints. If you like photography that demands something of the viewer, you might find this very enjoyable.
-- wiredweird
 Racy! January 10, 2008
Last year, we spent the winter holiday in Eastern Europe, and mostly in Prague. We ate at a very swanky restaurant that featured the photographs of Jan Saudek all over its walls. We happened to have my elderly mother-in-law and 3-yr-old daughter along, but we could handle the content. I had never seen photos quite like them and found them intriguing. I thought this book would make an interesting Valentines gift for my husband when we returned to the States. The book is great. The story of Jan Saudek is fascinating and inspiring. But be warned - some of the photos are REALLY explicit. I had expected this to be a coffee-table book, but with a young child in the house, we keep it put away. When it arrived in the mail, my dad was visiting. I started to show it to him, and felt quite awkward and embarrassed as I flipped to some of the photos. This is not a book you EVER want to look at with your dad. All that said, I think the work is strange and beautiful and provoking.
It's Not What You See, It's What You See... January 29, 2004
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
I ran across this publication in a used book barn and thumbed through it. What I saw made me wonder what kind of a violent lunatic Jan Saudek is, and what kind of a sadistic perverted mind would create such photos? But something about the book peeked my interest. I reminded myself that I am an artist, so I at least owed it to the photographer to objectively evaluate his work, so I did...two more times, from cover to cover, and quite thoroughly. What I discovered was a myriad of hidden and intwerwoven themes, many which had almost no relation at all to the photos themselves, and which all tied into one central theme. Whether this is a collection of political, moral, ethical, and social issues can only be known for sure by Jan Saudek, but all these things can be deduced if you put forth the effort and see with an artist's eye. Perhaps my favorite two photos in the entire book is one where a nude woman is sitting upright with her legs folded behind her head as she peers through a set of binoculars, and a photo of an overweight woman standing naked with large dark freckles and rosy cheeks painted on her face. They are humorous but quite thought provoking if you get past the initial images and attempt to interpret what the artist is saying. I can almost assure you that nudity or eroticism are not the issues at all. Another set of photos shows Jan lighting a cigarette. His head is shaved. In the opposing photo a woman has a pistol in her mouth. Both are killing themselves, but in different ways. It really appears to go much deeper than that, but I do not have time to explain all that I and a friend interpret from those photos. Two others that hit a sore spot, however, are: one where Jan is walking off into a rainbow with a stick slung across his shoulder and a small rag full of his bare necessities suspended from the pole. Someone who appears to be his wife is inside a barren house. She appears to be crying as she peers through a window and watches him departing. The other photo is of Jan kissing a woman as they both lie in a field, while in the distance another woman is hanging by her neck from a tree branch. These two photos spoke clear messages to me...the man leaves his true love for happier days and greener pastures, not understanding that his quest for selfish satisfaction is killing the one who truly loves him and with whom he has the most promise of happiness. These, of course, are only my own interpretations. I HIGHLY recommend you take your time viewing this book, and avoid being overly judgemental of it at first. It is truly not what it seems, and is certainly one of the best marriages of art and photography on the market.
Jan at his finest August 19, 1999
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
Jan Saudek is the most important artist of his type. This beautiful hard-cover edition has many of Jan's most obscure work as well as some of his earlier works, many of which can not be found anywhere else. I have been amazed by this work and recommend it to anyone. It shows both the power and the development of Jan. We can see his style change from a wide eyed-ideailst to a bitter man, consumed with the evils of life and the horrors of humanity. Jan Saudek is truley the master.
Hand-colored photographs by a master November 9, 1998
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
Jan Saudek's deeply erotic and personal photographs have rarely been seen outside europe. It is remarkable that most of them were produced under communist rule. Saudek's hand-coloration is absolutely unique. His studio is a cellar and the peeling brick walls his trademark. This book is an excellent example of his work
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