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Dubbed the "poet of Prague," Josef Sudek (1896-1976) was one of the most important and celebrated of Czech photographers. Sudek produced his best work during his middle-aged years, having grown up and out of the rules of modernism and into a style of his own. Whereas his photographs from the 1930s are mainly a reflection of the external world, by the 1940s he was returning to himself, finding his own unique creative path. It was during this period that he made his most famous photograph, a view of the world seen through his studio window, the window ledge doubling as a stage for still-life objects--a setup which he repeated to great effect. Not even the pressures of World War II and the difficult postwar years--including the demands of socialist realism in the arts--interrupted the continuity of his oeuvre, documented in this back-in-print volume.

Though Alfons Mucha, known as Alphonse Mucha, (1860-1939) achieved lasting international acclaim as an Art Nouveau painter, graphic designer and decorator, his photography is not as well known. In this new, expanded edition produced in cooperation with the Mucha Trust, an intimate and accomplished photographer is revealed. A kind of sketchbook and personal visual diary, this record of captured moments from the mid-1880s until the end of the artist's life illuminates both Mucha's career as an artist and the time in which he lived. In addition, the behind-the-scenes glimpses of his studio prove that Mucha--a key creator of the ideal of Art Nouveau beauty--was one of the pioneers of the classic nude in Czech photography. For lay readers and photographic connoisseurs alike, this volume illuminates a unique and powerful artistic vision.

Despite a career that was curtailed at the age of 29, Vladimír Jindrich Bufka (1887-1916) was one of the most distinctive early-twentieth-century art photographers in Prague and indeed in all of Austria-Hungary. Bufka drew on contemporary artistic movements such Impressionism, Symbolism and Cubism for his pioneering prints using the demanding process of gum printing.

The Czech photojournalist Jindrich Marco (1921-2000) is best known for his World War II photographs, which, rather than depicting killing fields, captured the ordinary citizens of war-torn cities like Berlin, Dresden and Warsaw returning home and attempting to pick up the pieces. This monograph includes these and later series made throughout Europe in happier times.

Jan Sagl, born in Humpolec, Bohemia, in 1942, is a pioneer of color photography in the Czech Republic. He is known for his photographs of landscapes and inconspicuous corners of cultural metropolises, as well as the design work he did for psychedelic concerts with his wife, the artist Zorka Saglova.

Born in 1942, Prague photographer Jan Reich carries on the work of Josef Sudek. He began with still lifes, portraits and documentary photographs, then switched to rural and urban landscapes in the 70s. Working with old, large-format cameras--one of which was given to him by Sudek--he documents the rocky land around Sedl?cany.

Leading Czech photographer and photojournalist Tomki Nemec was one of Vaclav Havel's personal photographers in the 90s. Winner of two World Press Photo awards, his work has been published in the "Los Angeles Times Magazine," "The New York Times" and "Time Magazine." This volume collects his black-and-white documentary photographs of ordinary people throughout the world.

After the Second World War, Czech avant-garde photographer Eva Fukova and her first husband, Vladimir Fuka, were close to the artists of Skupina 42. In 1967, they emigrated to the United States, where Eva Fukova has continued to make work that renders the familiar strange by blending absurdity with raw inspiration.

The oeuvre of the leading Czech avant-garde photographer Eugen Wiskovsky (1888-1964) is not large in size or subject range, but it is noteworthy in its originality, depth of ideas, and mastery. Wiskovsky's early New Objectivist works, from the late 1920s and early 1930s, sought artistic effect in apparently nonaesthetic objects: His inventive lighting and cropping allowed their elementary lines to stand out, to lose their worldly associations and take on potential metaphorical meanings. In his dynamic diagonal compositions, Wiskovsky was among the most radical practitioners of Czech Constructivism. His landscape work is similarly distinctive. With text from Vladimmr Birgus, a historian of photography and the head of the Institute of Creative Photography at Silesian University, Opava, in the Czech Republic.