Jan Saudek is currently the most renowned Czech photographer. Adored as well as vilified, celebrated as well as despised, worshiped as well as cursed. He holds a unique place in the development of Czech as well as world photography. Because he is distinctive and original, his work is not part of any genre or movement. He cannot be compared to anyone and there is no way to classify him. And even if we tried to do so, ultimately he would be all alone in such a “pigeon hole”.

Saudek’s work is a matter of vision; the result of his yearning for freedom and ‘another’, personal world where all human dreams, passions, and pleasures, as well as secret perversions can be fulfilled. Thus, it is primarily the question of human identity, which provokes us so much in Saudek’s photographs.

The whole of Saudek’s work is very intimate and he is quite easily vulnerable to it himself. He is constantly taking chances that the viewer starts laughing or becomes angry - be it due to embarrassment, stuffiness or misunderstanding. And he has been aware of this risk all his life. But whether his photographs deal with most tender emotions or the questionable sides of human being, as a whole, they are a massive celebration of humanness. And it is this very original, provocative adoration of manhood - to which anything human is not strange - that makes Jan Saudek a unique character in contemporary photography.

   
1990: Honoured as a ‘Chevalier des Arts et Lettres’.

Jan Saudek

Editorial: "Koyaanisquatsi" i-D Oct98 with Shalom Harlow

Carter Smith has spent the past fifteen years travelling the world, documenting people and places in gritty detail.

After high school, he attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City with thoughts of becoming a fashion designer, but his love of photography steered him toward a career in fashion photography instead.

He has also directed music videos for many of today’s leading musical acts, documented several recording artists during their studio sessions, and finished his second feature length film called Love Rome, directed commercials, and is a widely published and skilled photographer. Most importantly though, he co-directed the Jane’s Addiction docu-drama Three Days, which followed the band throughout their entire 1997 tour.

..please check Carter Smith’s official website; Metroflix for more new projects.

..and Art+Commerce for Carter Smith’s photography portfolio

and a significant postscript for a more significant film; Koyaanisqatsi:

ko.yaa.nis.qatsi(from the Hopi language), n. 1. crazy life 2. life in turmoil 3. life disintegrating 4. life out of balance 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living

"The film’s role is to provoke, to raise questions that only the audience can answer. This is the highest value of any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the experience of the encounter. The encounter is my interest, not the meaning. If meaning is the point, than propaganda and advertising is the form. So in the sense of art, the meaning of KOYAANISQATSI is whatever you wish to make of it. This is its power!" -Godfrey Reggio

Koyaanisqatsi is the first film of Quatsi Trilogy, directed by Godfrey Reggio, created between 1975 and 1982. The film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds — urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass. The other films are Powaqqatsi (life in transformation) and Naqoyqatsi (life as war).

Reggio is prominent in the film world for his QATSI trilogy, essays of visual images and sound which chronicle the destructive impact of the modern world on the environment. Reggio, who spent 14 years in silence and prayer while studying to be a monk, has a history of service not only to the environment but to youth street gangs, the poor, and the community as well.

Editorial: "Mad About You" Vogue US Oct2003

Photography by Steven Meisel

Photoshoot for POP Mag issue10

Model: Karen Elson

Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott potfolio via ArtPartner

Editorial: "Voltige" Numéro issue41

Model: Mariacarla Boscono

Editorial: "The New Ease" Vogue IT Aug2005

Model: Valentina Zelyaeva

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