Cé in Josef Louda's circle

The artist mentioned in the title undoubtedly belongs among the significant figures of Czech photography of the 21st century. He has many acronyms. From a photographer of personalities to a photographer of the female body. However, he differs from most of his colleagues by a gift that was put in his cradle by his fellow women. That is, the art of expressing himself through the written word. Both in journalistic genres and in prose. His cé in the ring, i.e. copyright, can be found in several of his published books. Loud's authorship mark is also present in the cover of a unique, erotically-themed novel with an enticing cover, which has recently received a second edition thanks to the great interest of readers.

The book was officially presented in Prague's Karlín, at the legendary Charleston restaurant. Here, under the baton of the well-known moderator and entertainer Ales Cibulka, a long-time friend and collaborator of Loud's from television, the launch of this mystical erotic novel about the fateful meeting of a man and a woman took place. At the same time, friends and colleagues celebrated the author's high anniversary. In contrast to the first edition, the current one is accompanied by comments from personalities from our cultural life, such as the poet Jiří Žáček, the writer Oldřiška Tylová or the Renaissance artisan and cimrmanologist Miloň Čepelka, who with their lines bowed a symbolic hat in respect to Loud's book.

Portraitist of life

Josef louda (born 1947) describes himself as "a photographer's man". He has set his lens on people as well as nature, although he considers the female nude to be the pinnacle of natural beauty. An independent photographer and publicist since 2000, he has held two dozen solo exhibitions and the diversity of his creative work has earned him three wins in various categories in the Prague Photography Competition. Experts and ordinary lovers of photographic art still remember his legendary exhibition entitled Josef Louda 3N in the spring of 2012 in the Old Town Hall, where he filled all the exhibition spaces. It is a well-known fact that this artist prefers to work on photo projects that have made him famous beyond the borders of the Czech Republic.

Celebrities in frames

Josef Louda says that he owes his life to the rich "material", both literary and photographic. At least as his collection, which consists of a mosaic of numerous portraits of well-known personalities, mainly from the cultural sphere, who kept a selected picture frame in front of them while being photographed. Hence the title Celebrities in Frames. A book could be written about his next series, again legendary, depicted on a large-scale canvas (at the Old Town Hall it covered two walls of the Cross Corridor), A Thousand Faces with a Halo, and who they were made with and on what occasions. In the beginning there was an idea where he "built" the objects of his interest so that their head was complemented by a chandelier or other luminaire with a halo-forming effect. Louda portrayed over one thousand two hundred (!) "enlightened" personalities in this way over the years, which put him in the Czech Book of Records. He was also (one is tempted to write - above all) an erotic photographer of women's wedges. His successful project of variations on the female wedge culminated in an exhibition entitled Vaginalia, or We've All Been There. Later, Josef Louda also embodied the idea in a book of poems called Vábivé zágby (Tempting Folds), where he illustrated the texts of three dozen of our leading poets with, as he says, the centre of the universe - a woman's wedge (the book was published in 2007 and soon became a collector's item).

The man they're talking about

Loud's curriculum vitae reads like a thrilling novel in itself. However, the well-known saying "nine crafts, ten miseries" does not apply to him, for he is at least rich in spirit. So far, he has written interviews with well-known interesting personalities and taken photographs of them at the same time. All of this was published in the book Extraordinary Encounters, which he says that with the passage of time it has become more meaningful. Among the nearly thirty personalities interviewed are our most famous actresses and actors of the time, such as Vlastimil Brodský, just a few months before he ended his life, Stella Zázvorková, who in the interview took stock of her acting and private life, and the sculptor Josef Nálepa, in his confession, describes the circumstances under which he portrayed Salvador Dali. In addition to artists, the book also includes other doctors - psychiatrists, sexologists, as well as journalists and one hockey legend - goalkeeper Jiří Holeček...

Muse through the eyes of the muses

The bibliophilia of Loud's work takes up a large folio. He is the author of dozens of front pages of leading social magazines, articles, reports and interviews. He has had a number of solo exhibitions, including the most recent one on the occasion of his jubilee in the Old Town Hall, where a cross-section of his life's work occupied the main exhibition hall and adjacent spaces, including the romantic cellar. He is, among other things, the author of the project Muse through the eyes of the muses, in which he had the great harpist Zbyňka Šolcová photographed by thirty-three photographers and took on the documentation of their work himself, which resulted in a total exhibition travelling through Czech galleries (the opening was at the State Opera House). Eventually this exhibition made its way to Chicago. He is also the author of the theme of the unique TV documentary The Saud Brothers (a short time ago, TV aired a rerun on the occasion of the 90th birthday of photographer Jan Saudek). It remains to add that he is also a three-time winner of the Prague Photography Competition.

Idea - Random - Mood

Josef Louda makes no secret of his recipe for good photography. He has his formula, expressed by the simple 3N - Idea - Chance - Mood. And he adds: "All of this is contained in my photography and therefore in my photography. Ideas, coincidences and moods are what I have been and am facing with my camera every day, in every season. And they walked towards me. Photography and photography have always been, are and will always be my passion. And passion, as we know, manifests itself in the fact that when you fall asleep you look forward to waking up again to pursue it. Whether idea, chance or mood prevails in my images must be judged by those who look at them, because it also depends on what one wants to see. But even in these views, let it be true: "To the pure all things are pure..."

He is referring to the audience's reactions to the artistic acts he has created. However, this is only a fraction of his creative output. He is still bursting with ideas today, when his 80th birthday is knocking on his door. Of course, he also lives in the present and is very depressed by the brutality and violence that is growing in society, even among young people, including children, as evidenced by recent cases of bullying, assault and the like, including attacks on teachers in schools.

He is therefore seriously engaged in a school project called Relationships, which should be included as a separate subject in the school curriculum in cooperation with parents, schools and psychologists with psychiatrists. The fact that this activity of Louda's does not remain only on paper is evidenced by the fact that what Josef Louda conceives, he also implements. For example, during his seven years in public relations, he initiated the establishment of the Nova Foundation and became the organizer of concerts for the mentally handicapped called We Want to Live with You, which are still held every year.

Epilogue

Joseph is like mercury. He does not sit still, today he is here and tomorrow he is there, how he keeps up with it all is not clear, especially if his name is Louda. The pun isn't original, and he's heard it many times, but it's nice to hear. He has traveled almost all over Europe with his Nikon, a few countries in Africa, photographed with Czech Miskies in Mauritius, and also life across the "big puddle" in the USA. He is as good at documentary photography as he is at fine art and freelance photography.

What would he like to say to aspiring photographers?

Curriculum vitae
Since the all-knowing Wikipedia has remained stubbornly silent in Loud's case, we consulted the medallion at the end of the book

Love incompatible with life. Telegraphic quote:

Josef Louda, born 9 April 1947 in Klatovy, doctor of philosophy, professional photographer and publicist. After graduating from a bricklayer's apprenticeship, he studied at the Industrial School of Construction in Pilsen. After basic military service, he worked as a foreman in his field at the Prague Road and Water Management Construction Company. Although a non-partisan, as a result of political vetting in 1971, he worked for 22 years at Sběrné suroviny, where he started from scratch at the collection scale and ended up as production and technical deputy (!). He studied psychology, sociology and adult pedagogy by distance learning at CU. In 1993 he joined the newly established commercial television NOVA.

At the time of the millennium celebrations, he is going freelance and will soon become one of the most sought-after photographers and publicists. He organized dozens of solo exhibitions, published three books and representative catalogues of his photographs Josef Louda 3N and Josef Louda's Handles are still sought after and appreciated by collectors of artistic photography. He lives and works in Žižkov, Prague.

Ivan Cerny / gnews.cz