Prague photographer had to be an imposing figure, something unreal, ghostly, with its dark coat and a military overcoat, sometimes walking through the misty Prague, with the camera on his shoulder. An old Kodak wood box, whose tripod used as a counter, holding it with his one arm.
During the Great War, the explosion of a grenade on the Italian front in July 1916, his right arm amputated. So when he came home, had to leave his job as a bookbinder and photography, which was dedicated as a hobby became his profession.
For years, walked the streets with his camera, capturing images of the city, "Prague
photographer," they called it.
But during the Nazi occupation, he locked himself in his studio, just a wooden shed where he photographed still lifes, flowers, glasses, bottles, or the view through the window of his study: the branch of an apple, the facades of adjacent buildings, a blizzard ...
Walker became an interior passer, an observer of everyday life, he took photographs of obsessively, from different points of view, or using different lighting.
When he died, the studio where she worked was abandoned, and much of the material, papers, photographs, books-were lost in a fire.
I always liked that picture of him: a vase of roses almost withered along with a shell, with the tempered glass, crossed vertically by drops, of his study.
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| study window Josef Sudek, Prague |