Eugen Wiškovský

Czech, 1888–1964

Death placePrague, Czech Republic

Birth placeKolin, Czech Republic

Biography(1888 - 1964)
Eugen Wiskovsky was only 15 when he was given his first camera, in which after exposure a new negative plate had to be inserted in the dark room - therefore the young photographer had to concentrate on static motifs. He became involved in more serious photographic work during his studies at the Kolin grammar school in the 1920s. This was undoubtedly greatly influenced by his friendship with the former grammar school pupil Jaromir Funke, the leading representative of Czech avant-garde photography, who often visited his parent in Kolin. Funke was an enthusiastic advocate of the ideas of the New Objectivity and constructivism and a promoter in independent "photogenius".

Wiskovsky soon adopted Funke's aversion to the anachronistic pictorialism which imitated painting and drawing by suppressing many specific characteristics of the photographic medium. Whereas in the 1920s the battle between advocates of pictorialism and those of straight photography had long been won by the opposing adversaries of the fine print, it was not until 1921 that the exhibition of the work of D.J. Rusicka, an American of Czech origin, presented to Czechoslovakia Stieglitz's trend of direct photography rejecting any interference with the negative. In his first and probably most important article "On Pictorial Photography", published in the journal Foto in 1929, Wiskovsky unambiguously rejected any endeavor to imitate visual arts models and emphasized the specificity of photography: "Should they have any justification at all, then they must achieve their objectives in a way that cannot be achieved by any other but a photographic technique.". Wiskovsky's photographs from the end of the 1920's and the 1930's perfectly correspond to the postulates of the New Objectivity photography, which turned attention to the problems of form and structure and the photographic expression of the essential features of the depicted objects, in the sphere of form on the sharpness and tonal wealth of the photographic picture.

In Wiskovsky's work quality always dominated over quantity. There are not many photographs from the period of the new straight photography, for Wiskovsky often returned to individual motifs and photographed them until he was satisfied. Wiskovsky often prepared pictures for hours or went out with his camera only to return without taking a single picture. Some of his "final" photos in the style of New Objectivity, however, belong to the best works not only in Czechoslovakia, but in the world. In spite of the rationality and formal perfection of his photographs, Wiskovsky was concerned not only with an artistically impressive depiction of the object, but with a photographic expression of his impression.

Wiskovsky devoted himself exclusively to creative work. The pursuit of medals awarded to photosalons was alien to him. However, in 1930 his work was in the well known Exhibition of Modern Photography along with Rossler, Funke, Lehovec and Sudek. The end of the 1930's and 1940's was the most productive period in Wiskovsky's photographic and theoretical work. This was encouraged especially by Josef Ehm, who in 1939 - in cooperation with Jaromir Funke - became the editor of the journal Fotograficky obzor. Both Ehm and Funke gradually succeeded in changing this conservative monthly of the Union of Czech Amateur Photographers' Club into a modern journal. Wiskovsky himself contributed a considerable amount to the change, publishing not only a series of his photographs in the journal, but also some extraordinarily revealing and well-based theoretical articles which together with the articles by Karel Teige and Jaromir Funke build the basis of modern Czech theory of photography.

In the late 1940's, when the onset of the communist regime made the superficial ideological aspect of photography more and more unilaterally preferred, Wiskovsky withdrew from public photographic life. In the following decade he devoted his work mainly to an extensive cycle of emotional photographs of rather serious content which included photographs of the old Jewish cemetery in Prague.

Eugen Wiskovsky Fotografie
Vladimir Birgus
Prague House of Photography

Person TypePerson