Jan Saudek

Garrett Lambur
To describe Jan Saudek’s work in one word: unusual. His artwork seems to push all boundaries to the point where there seem to be none that exist at all. He goes from a photo of a baby being held by a man to a picture of a path up a woman’s vagina (it was quite strange and surprised me). But for all the unusualness of his work I had a strange appreciation for some of the work. Some may not call it art but it was an expression of himself through the lens of the camera so to me that classifies it as art. Almost all of his artwork contains some sort of nudity and if it doesn’t then the next photograph of the same characters does. It is strange because people in the U.S. have different ideas surrounding nudity; mainly that it is a bad thing to be shown. But I admired Saudek’s use of nudity within his artwork, because there is no reason that we should be ashamed of nudity. All bodies have the same anatomy and there is nothing wrong with this nudity. Some claim that America’s different treatment of nudity can be traced back to its Puritan roots and I have to agree with this claim. It is strange to look at the US and Europe on their different treatment of Sex and Violence, they are almost exact opposites when looking at the rating scale of such acts in movies. Saudek’s photos were some of the first I had seen in a long time that pushed the boundaries even within Europe or my experiences within Europe. At first I was shocked when looking upon many of them but then I realized that the majority of them were things that were part of life though they were the things kept hidden. There are certain topics that people do not want to discuss for one reason or another but sometimes it can be better if you are able to discuss something (some things may be better left untouched for respect to people’s past experiences). Saudek to me is able to push the boundaries and break many of them down and in discussing a piece of his work, one would be able to go where perhaps they may not have been able to go before. For we must always travel into the Great Blue Yonder, always searching for something new either inwardly or outwardly.