Jindrich Styrsky

“The whole principle of taking photographs lies in being surprised at finding a certain object and thinking about this discovery in the sense of Surrealism.”
Jindrich Styrsky

Styrsky was actively involved in the surrealist movement from the founding of the Group of Surrealists in Czechoslovakia in 1934 until his death in 1942. The first exhibition of the Czechoslovak Surrealists took place at the Manes Gallery in Prague in 1935, and though Styrsky was already an established painter at that time, it was his photographs that attracted the most attention at the 1935 exhibition. Art critic Karel Srp says that Styrsky photographed in the way that he did “in order to capture the direct transition of everyday reality into super-reality.” This use of the term “super-reality” would seem to indicate that Styrsky was a surrealist in his photographic work as well as his painting. And yet Styrsky had been photographing shop windows, funereal objects and fairgrounds (his preferred, though by no means his only, subjects) since 1920, predating his involvement with Surrealism by more than a decade. Styrsky’s choice of subject matter, with its focus on fairgrounds and manikins, was in many ways more poetist than surreal. In addition, his photography was unarranged or unmanipulated in that he neither attempted to set up “trick” shots nor use darkroom techniques to achieve special effects; instead, he sought to present his subjects in such a straightforward, unstaged way that he might almost be called a documentary photographer.

The viewer who sees a number of his photographs in a short period of time finds himself or herself involved in an unsettling search for a resting place that is hard to find. Styrsky’s choice of subject matter explores a genuine tension between the real and the imaginary. Styrsky wasn’t the only person to photograph such objects. French photographer Eugene Atget was probably the first, but many others, from Henri Cartier-Bresson to Andre Kertesz (and in Czechoslovakia, Jaromir Funke), explored the world of shop window manikins, funereal objects, and other bizarre items. According to Srp, however, Styrsky’s approach was unusual in that he tended to focus, first and foremost, on the details of the object itself. “[Styrsky’s] process is remote from Atget’s approach to photography,” Srp says. “Styrsky particularizes, rips fragments out of their context, monumentalizes details. He focuses, for example, on a rubber glove attached to a shop window, on an artificial hand lying in the window of a perfume shop.” Elsewhere Srp says, “The method Styrsky chose to photograph appeared simple. It even seemed accessible to everybody. The direct portrayal without any kind of secondary effects was, however, probably more demanding than the complicated experimental techniques. At the very least it places greater emphasis on the perception of the world around us.” Styrsky purposefully looked for and carefully chose certain objects (like the manikin’s hand), yet photographed them as though he was only accidentally standing before them. Srp says in this way his camera was like a surgeon’s scalpel, which he used “to extract the utilitarian function from objects, without letting their raw nakedness suppress the mysterious ambiguity.” He goes on to say that this is done in order to reveal the meanings objects have in the subconscious.

Click here to see more Styrsky images from the Ubu Gallery New York.