Karel Cudlín

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Karel Cudlín (b. 28 June 1960) is a Czech photographer.

Cudlín was born in Prague[1] and started taking photographs in his teens. Borrowing his father's Exakta and supported by his uncle, a photography enthusiast, Cudlín soon started photographing the Gypsies of Žižkov, the suburb where he lived. Cudlín attended a social work school that, combined with a short stint in a low-grade job, provided him with the proletarian credentials needed to join the Fotografia cooperative. The cooperative sent him to a ballroom in the Lucerna area where he overcame considerable technical difficulties in photographing young people at night. A third area that he explored was Communist Party rituals.

After a year at Lidová škola umění, Cudlín was in 1983 admitted to FAMU, very free by Czechoslovakian standards of the time. He graduated in 1987, and soon found work at the weekly Mladý svĕt. With the democratization of Czechoslovakia, he embarked on a series of relationships with other Czechoslovakian media sources, among them the newspapers Prostor and Lidové noviny and the ČTA agency. After ČTA closed in 1996, Cudlín became a freelance photographer.

Cudlín's new themes included refugees, Israel, the lingering Soviet forces within Czechoslovakia, Valdice prison, and, by accident, Ukraine (a putsch had interrupted Cudlín and Vojta Dukát's plan to go to Moscow). He has continued with a small number of long-term projects (Ukrainian workers in Prague, hypermarkets), photographed in black and white.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Biographical information is from Silverio, pp. 7–13, 112.

[edit] Books of Cudlín's works

  • Photographie. Prague: Torst, 1994.
  • (With Jindřich Marco) Izrael (50). Prague: Argo, 1998.
  • Silverio, Robert. Karel Cudlín. Prague: Torst, 2001. ISBN 80-7215-148-7 Text in Czech and English.

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