Jan Saudek is the most famous living Czech photographer, and simultaneously the most provocative. For over four decades Saudek has created a parallel photographic universe, a two-dimensional home full of longing, peopled with the most extraordinary characters and colored by desire. The timeless strength of his hand-tinted photographs lies in their poetic compositions and their forceful pictorial language, with its overtones of medieval genre pictures and Baroque mythology.

Daniela Mrázková, critic and editor of the Czech magazines Revue fotografie and Fotografie-Magazin, is the author of 16 books on photography published in her own country (Czech Republic) and abroad, and curator of around 50 photography exhibitions.