Following the loss of his right arm during World War I,
Sudek returned to Czechoslovakia and began pursuing photography in earnest.
Amateur photography clubs were thriving worldwide as the medium found greater
acceptance as a creative endeavor. Sudek joined the Czech Amateur Photographic
Association in 1921, but was later expelled along with the young photographers
Jaromír Funke and Adolf Schneeberger for criticizing the traditional, soft
focus aesthetic championed by the association. In 1924—the year Sudek took this
portrait—the three men founded the Czech Photographic Society so that they
could more freely pursue modern, experimental photographic practices.