Amanda: Jan Saudek

I really enjoyed our visit to the Jan Saudek gallery, and learned a lot about photography and pushing the limits of art from his work. The biggest theme throughout all of his work is a strong presence of a dream/fantasy world which I really enjoyed exploring. His overall style and technique greatly aided to his ultimate artistic message and I found his work to be incredibly unique and thought provoking. I have rarely seen photographers use hand coloring, and overlapping negatives in such a flawless way that really incorporated their theme along with it. This style made it hard to decipher exactly where the lines of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ begin and end and made me wonder how the images were created.
I had seen a lot of his images online but I particularly found it interesting the great impact of seeing his work as a whole had on me. I truly felt as though the images were each depicting part of Saudek, varying in subject matter and communicating different things. Some works were very serious, while others made me laugh out loud at first glimpse. The role of family, sexuality, unconscious thought, and fantasy in each individual were all explored in his photographs. These are all huge aspects of life which he took on, and my favorite thing about his work is that he did it all without taking himself too seriously. A great example of this is his direct answer to critics who called him a pervert, with panel piece entitled “pornography.”
Throughout the gallery it is clear that Saudek wants to break the idea of conventional beauty, and defy many social norms. Many of his images were striking, and it is clear that his choice in models is intentional in providing a variety of ages, body types, etc. in order to make his work relatable to all and to strengthen his message. This is particularly powerful considering the circumstances he was facing with the soviet occupation of Prague when many of his work was created. He was defying the bounds set by society and the government in attempts to explore and provoke these universally experienced topics that he photographed. Overall, I really like Saudek’s work and got a lot of inspiration from viewing his collection.