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Jan Sagl

by Jan Sagl

Photographs: Jan Sagl

Text: Magdalena Jurikova

Publisher: Torst

134 pages

Pictures: 104

Year: 2009

ISBN: 978-80-7215-358-9

Price: 19.90 €

Comments: softcover, 18 x 16 cm, bilingual in English and Czech. Graphic design: studio Najbrt.

Jan Ságl, born in Humpolec, Bohemia, in 1942, is a pioneer of color photography in the Czech Republic. Photographing in color since 1979, even back then he demonstrated the legitimacy of this medium, going against the majority view of the unique artistic possibilities of black-and-white photography. The public is most familiar with his landscapes: land with memory, exploited by people, with tilled fields and the remains of vanished civilizations, with cultural accretions and changes. Apart from landscapes, Ságl searches for inconspicuous corners in cultural metropolises, particularly in Paris. Working with international agencies and periodicals (including Zeit Magazin, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic) he is continuously on the road. The works he makes strictly for himself developed in contact with the art scene, which he first participated in as a photographer for art periodicals, later in the artistic design of concerts by psychedelic bands, which he executed with his artist wife, Zorka Ságlová. After the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 the Ságls found themselves socially isolated, and decided to move to the countryside, where Ságl’s conception of landscape was developed fully. His artistic endeavors were to some extent influenced by trends in conceptual art, but he is primarily concerned with the expression and context of what is photographed, rather than merely summarized abstracted form.

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