Sudek

"I remember one time, in one of the Romanesque halls, deep below the spires of the cathedral [St. Vitus]--it was dark as in catacombs--with just a small window below street level inside the massive medieval walls. We set up the tripod and camera and then sat down on the floor and talked. Suddenly Sudek was up like lightening. A ray of sun had entered the darkness and both of us were waving cloths to raise mountains of dust 'to see the light,' as Sudek said. Obviously he had known that the sun would reach here perhaps two or three times a year, and he was waiting for it." - Sonja Bullaty

For me, Sudek is a mentor - a vague faraway force, whose muted axioms lay hidden in the layers of his deceptively simple work. I assert that you cannot take a better photograph of an onion than Sudek - his glow with an inner light unseen by most mortals in possession of an imaging system be it digital or film - though perhaps an old master of oils could equal the effort.

A glass on the windowsill. I flip past seeking the images my over-saturated eye has come to expect and need as 'art' - and yet I return thinking - but it's just a glass of water, how could the muse be reflected in that? and then I notice that somehow through a distant mirror, Sudek has winked at me, led me into his little room, shared his facility with the north facing window's miserly light, implanted a bit-o-the-equivalence, slyly, sneaking it under the door of my pseudo-refined artistic editor/conscience and tweaked my nose with a cryptic smile. I, who will willingly drive hundreds of miles to take photographs, have to acknowledge that Sudek travelled far in his little room.

Photo: Neo-romantic, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom