Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek is one of the Czech Republic’s leading photographers. He received international recognition in the 1990s, when the publisher Taschen produced multiple books of his photos. Saudek makes erotic, often hand-colored photographs of nudes and voluptuous women in dreamlike spaces. He and many members of his family were interned in concentration camps during World War II; Saudek and his twin brother were among the lucky few who survived. After the war, he turned to photography as a means of coping with the memories of his traumatic childhood. Working under the repressive conditions of Communist Czechoslovakia, Saudek produced his explicit photographs underground, careful not to attract the attention of the secret police who censored anything they considered to be pornography.