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Czech it out
Josef Sudek’s Prague photos, plus kinky sex at Man Ray
BY RANDI HOPKINS

Moody, introspective images of mid-20th-century Prague, including atmospheric views of the city at night, lyrical images of trees and gardens, panoramic landscapes, and close-up still lifes mark the photographs of the leading Czech photographer of the 20th century, and his work is the subject of "Josef Sudek: Poet with a Camera," which opens this Wednesday at the Museum of Fine Arts. Born the son of a house painter in 1896, in an industrial town in what was then Bohemia, Sudek was apprenticed to a bookbinder as a young man but had to give up this trade after he lost his right arm in 1916 while serving on the Italian front in World War I. It was during the three years he spent recuperating in a veterans’ hospital after his injury that he began to take up photography.

Sudek struggled to adjust to his loss. When he revisited Italy with a group of musicians from the Czech Philharmonic in 1926, he found himself compelled to leave the group to go looking desperately for his arm. In her 1978 book Sudek, Sonja Bullaty, a Holocaust survivor who worked briefly as the artist’s assistant after World War II, quotes his description of his ordeal: "I had to disappear in the middle of the concert; in the dark I got lost, but I had to search. Far outside the city . . . finally I found the place. But my arm wasn’t there . . . somehow I could not get myself to return from this country. I turned up in Prague some two months later. . . . From that time on, I never went anywhere, anymore and I never will. What would I be looking for when I didn’t find what I wanted to find?"

For the next five decades, Sudek created photographs using bulky, large-format camera equipment that he operated and carried around one-handed. He focused on the transforming effect of light; he dedicated himself to capturing Prague, from its grandest monuments to the humble view of his garden from his studio window. Such works as Evening on Charles Bridge (1940-’50), and A Walk in the Magic Garden (1954) led to his being called "Poet of Prague."

The MFA’s exhibition is drawn primarily from the 78 Sudek photographs that make up the Sonja Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo Collection, photographs that She himself selected and gave to Bullaty and her husband after she emigrated to the United States in 1946. Thanks to that couple, Sudek’s intimate view of Prague is now ours.

If "The Bizarre World of Kinky Sex" is more your thing, note that the third installment of this painting series, with the erotic yet humorous work of the husband-wife team Michael Shores and Angela Mark, comes to the walls of Man Ray for the entire month of August. Man Ray, which describes itself as "catering to a variety of alternative cultures" and is known for its naughty fetish nights, plans to show a range of paintings that deal with kinky sex "from spanking to transvestism, bondage to voyeurism." A refreshing slap in the face from the youthful 21st century.

"Josef Sudek: Poet with a Camera" is at the Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue in Boston, July 28 through January 17; call (617) 267-9300 or go to www.mfa.org. "The Bizarre World of Kinky Sex, Volume III" is at Man Ray, 21 Brookline Street in Central Square, August 1 through 31, with an opening reception on August 14 from 9 to 10 p.m.; call (617) 864-0400.


Issue Date: July 30 - August 5, 2004
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