Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek, born in Prague, is a Czech art photographer and painter. Internationally, he is best known for his pictures of nudes. He works in black-and-white and colorizes the photos, giving his works a vintage, but also artistic and surreal look.

His works, including his nudes, feature men, women, teenagers, and children. Saudek dates all his vintage-style photographs 100 years earlier, so for example "1892" actually means 1992.

Jan Saudek is considered a leading Czech photographer, best known for his depictions of nudes and youthful figures arranged in dreamlike spaces. His hand-colored, erotic photographs of young women amidst painted backdrops and plaster props lend his work the appearance of mid-19th century photography. Born on May 13, 1935, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Saudek survived captivity in a Nazi concentration camp as a child, and artistic outlets became a means to cope with haunting childhood memories. He went on to pursue his interest in photography after seeing Edward Steichen’s book The Family of Man, and, despite the restrictions imposed by the Communist regime he lived under, he became an internationally renowned artist. His work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and is in the collections of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, among others. Saudek lives and works in Prague, Czech Republic.