In August 1976, a large Sudek retrospective opened in Roudnice, not far from Prague in the converted stable at a palatial estate where generations of Czech nobility had lived until the founding of the Republic in 1918. Sudek never came to his own openings; he was much too shy to endure being the center of so much attention. Yet, for the Roudnice opening he made an exception since he wanted to see how the photos were hung and to go on another day would require that some friend make a special trip to take him there. So he accepted a ride with Anna Farova, who was on the programme to make some opening remarks. After surveying his exhibition and expressing approval, Sudek retired to the curator's second floor office for a glass of wine. Later when the gallery had filled with celebrants, the curator showed Sudek through a door from his office onto a balcony overlooking the gallery space below. The curator joined the crowd on the gallery floor. A small chamber ensemble played some light classical music, the curator said some words of greeting, and Anna gave a short talk. Respecting his wishes neither Anna nor the curator called attention to the artist, whose head was barely visible over the balustrade at the far end of the room. When the proceedings concluded, Sudek's admirers slowly filtered out of the gallery, lingering over individual photographs, apparently unaware that Sudek had been watching the festivity from above. On the return trip to Prague in Anna's tiny sedan, I was wedged in beside Dr. Peter Helbich, Sudek's close friend in later life. He told me how he had met Sudek photographing in the woods of Moravia. They struck up a friendship and Sudek began tutoring the ear-and-throat specialist, thirty-years his junior, in his avid avocation of photography. Sudek called him "student" and the doctor called him "chief". A close relationship evolved between the unlikely pair. Helbich gave me his own private assessment of the connection between Sudek's life and his work. Ever since he lost his arm, Helbich explained, Sudek has felt estranged from the rest of humanity, and his photography is a means to bridge the gap. "It is the reason for the melancholy in his photographs", said Helbich. "Sometimes I think if he had not lost his arm, he would not have become the great artist he is." When we dropped Sudek in Prague that evening after dark, I noticed how very crooked his frame was as he passed under a street light, shuffling toward his studio a few blocks from Hrdcany Castle. A month later while Dr. Helbich was visiting him in his cluttered digs, Sudek was stricken with a heart attack and died enroute to the hospital, He was 80. Sudek, The Book . Sonja Bullaty was a young woman, just liberated from a Nazi concentration carnp, her head wrapped in a kerchief to hide her shaven pate, when she answered an ad in a Prague newspaper calling for a darkroom assistant. The photographer who placed the ad was Sudek and for the next year she struggled to keep pace with her dynamic boss, much her senior and her unwitting mentor. She was still bewildered by the trauma of the War but she knew she wanted to be a photographer. She trekked the city with him, washed his print trays, and listened to his chatter. But for her the city was haunted. Too often she saw familiar forms at a distance and rushed to catch lost friends or relatives only to meet total strangers up close. It was too much to bear and she left for the United States, where she made a succesful career as a photographer, giving New York and the Vermont countryside her loving attention after the style of Sudek's devotion to Prague and Moravia. Over a thirty year period, Sudek sent her selections of his prints: more than 300 all told. The present volume consists of 79 Sudek photographs drawn from her collection and from a similar American collection owned by Sudek's friend and contemporary, the former secretary of the Artists' Association in Prague, Dr. Brumlik. The selection is diverse and representative, including some well known classics and many images previously unpublished in the West. The sheet fed gravure printing is up to the extremely high demands of Sudek's unusual, subtle grey-palette. The photographs are accompanied by an enlightening, well-informed, critical account of Sudek's work by Anna Farova, Sonja Bullaty's own "Remembrances of Sudek", a collection of comments of Sudek on Sudek, called "A Self Portrait", and an extremely helpful bibliography of books and articles on and by the artist. The volume closes with a short series of Bullaty's own photographs of Sudek. The last and next to last pages contain a poignant farewell to the artist which must be seen to be enjoyed. There is one thing missing from the- Bullaty volume which is not to be called a fault, namely the great depth to which Sudek could penetrate a single subject with a protracted series of photos. Alas, the depth of the Sudek ouevre is much too great to be portrayed in a short volume. By the time of his death, his output in Czechoslovakia totalled 16 books and monographs. Take his Praha Panoramaticka (Prague Panoramas), one of the most sought after books in the antiquarian shops in Europe: it contains 284 panoramic photos of the city and the surrounding countryside. To grasp Sudek's achievement with this unusual format one must see many more than the four lovely panoramas included in the Bullaty volume. Then there is the Janacek book. Music was a passionate concern of Sudek throughout life and among the composers he admired was the Czech composer Leos Janacek (1854-1928). For years Sudek made a habit of summertime journeys to Janacek's native Hukvaldy in Moravia where he tried to capture both the special beauty of the area and the character of the composer through photographs of the countryside, the town and the composer's home. [Hukvaldy, incidentally, is located near Pribor, birthplace of Sigmund Freud]. A selection of over two hundred of these photographs appeared in 1971 in a book titled - Janacek/Hukvaldy published by Supraphon, the state monopoly for music publishing. Only one of these photos has made it into the Bullaty book, To fault Bullaty, or her publisher, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., for not publishing a larger book showing Sudek's depth of penetration in individual subjects, would be inappropriate. Such a large book would be priced beyond the reach of the wide public here in the West that has waited ten years for a proper introduction to Sudek's work, and thus it would be self- defeating. This introductory volume is wisely designed to show Sudek's great scope, and if it somewhat neglects his depth, it only makes our appetites for more and deeper Sudek books all the sharper. One can hope that the thousands and thousands of negatives and prints Sudek left behind in the labyrinths of his atelier will be preserved and made available to us one day after we have digested this beautiful book.