Author: | Jiří Šigut |
Category: | Books, Photography, Art |
Language: | English and Czech |
Translation: | Stephan von Pohl |
Page count: | 512 |
Binding: | Hbk |
ISBN: | 978–80–7437–253–7 |
EAN: | 9788074372537 |
Date: | 2018 |
Issue number: | 1. |
Price: | 63 EUR |
Size: | 24 x 28 cm |
Jiří Šigut, that "enfant terrible" of Czech photography, has spent more than thirty years intensively exploring the possibilities of the medium, transcending its boundaries, redefining it, and placing it with the broader centext of visual art in his own unique manner. This approach has made him one of just a few Czech artists (including Josef Sudek, František Drtikol, Josef Funke, Jindřich Štyrský, Emila Medková, Jan Svoboda, and Josef Koudelka) to have changed the way we perceive the artistic possibilities of photography.
In his early works, Šigut consciously did not influence wha was captured by his time exposures and so recorded ordinary activities (travels by bus, or elevator; going for a walk or going shopping ...). In the 1990s, he completely abandoned the traditional relationship of negative - positive and recorded his images directly on the photosensitive emulsion of the photographic paper, with the source of light and energy geing nature itself (daylight, stars, the moon, fire, fireflies...). Whenever he placed his photographic papers in the outdoors (for a period of days, week, or even months), he combined this cat with various rituals as part of highly personal and intimate nighttime performances. He even became the camera himself by applying a photosensitive emulsion onto his clothing to create entirely unique 4D photograms. Nor did he shy away from the new challenges presented by the advent of digital photography, and so he is curently waring to find a solid foundation for his most recent experimentations, which involve breaking down the image into its elementary units.
Through is uncommon and uncompromising inventiveness in exploring the very essence of things, Jiří Šigut ha show us that breaking free from ingrained ways of perceiving the imagecan be a powerful experience that enables us to concentrate on the inner yuality of the world all around us.
Czech Photography of the 20th Century, published simultaneously in Czech and English versions, is the first book to present the main trends, figures, and works of Czech photography from the beginning to the end of the last century to such a large extent. Its 517 plates include not only the most important, well-known photographs and photomontages, but also works that have long been forgotten or are published for the first time. The book is arranged in seventeen chapters, supplemented with chronologies of the most important events in twentieth-century Czech photography and history.