Josef Sudek: So-called Fine Art Photography

After Sudek’s death, Božena Sudková donated a collection of over twenty thousand negatives and photographs by Josef Sudek to the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The collection includes a broad range of photographs of artworks (including applied art and architecture), beginning with hand axes and ancient Greek and Roman works, through Czech Romanesque art, works from the Gothic period, the Baroque, and the 19th century, all the way to Sudek’s contemporaries.

The term – Fine Art Photography appears as one of the keywords used to describe the photographs which do not portray works of art and whose inclusion in the collection donated to the Institute of Art History was probably accidental. The exhibition explores this mistake, presenting photographs whose presence in a collection of artwork photography is hard to justify. They are neither dated nor labelled.