Jaroslav
Rössler: Czech Avant-Garde Photographer
by Vladimir
Birgus and Jan Mlcoch, Editors; Derek
Paton, Translator
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004
176 pp..illus. 178 b/w, 8 col. Trade:
$35.00
ISBN: 0-262-02557-4.
Reviewed by Allan Graubard
2900 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington,
DC 20008, USA
a.graubard@starpower.net
The formation of the modern spirit in
Europe prior to WW II would be much impoverished
without the presence of the Czech avant-garde.
Seminal movements from constructivism
to surrealism mark the debates begun and
contributions made in the evolving complex
of artistic values, whether revolutionary
by design or effect.
Intimate to this evolution are figures
in Czech photography, which we in the
West are finally encountering, Jaroslav
Rössler among them. A creator of
first importance to the mid-1930s, Rösslers
oeuvre bypasses the usual conventions
of type or style without, at the same
time, obscuring his interpretation of
them. Commonly associated with constructivist,
abstract, poetist, and informalist tendencies
throughout his career, Rössler emerges
in tact, a sensibility to be reckoned
with, perhaps because of his verve in
sustaining an anxious tone, a critical,
if disarming, poignancy in questioning
why and how. His touch remains his own
as does his means of envisioning; something
that was not lost on Karl Teige (principal
theoretician of Devetsil, the leading
avant-garde group prior to Czech surrealism),
who in 1926 placed Rösslers
work above that of Man Raywhen
Man Ray held a commanding influence on
Czech photography.
Unlike Man Ray, however, Rössler
rarely achieved success or popular notice
by name, despite his charming cosmetics
and other ads during the late 1920s and
early 1930s. No, Rösslers path
is more erratic. Beginning in 1935 and
for more than twenty years, in fact, he
endures an eclipse brought on by a failed
suicide attempt and an extensive depressive
aftermath. His public re-emergence in
1961 in the Prague quarterly Revue
Fotografie then in 1966, in Brno,
where he appears in the "Surrealism
and Photography" exhibit with younger
colleagues, is a tribute to his uniqueness
during a time when cultural liberties
in the former Czechoslovakia assume mounting
social importance.
Rössler makes his first teenage photos
in 1917 as an apprentice in the studio
of Frantisek Dritkol, an eminent
Czech photographer. Having learned his
trade there, along with a fascination
for new mass technologies, such as radio,
Rössler cultivates several techniques
to provide an image concurrent with the
tensions of the era, when photography
will soon claim its own space exclusive
of other arts. His early use of bromoil
(painting by brush on glass negatives)
expands to the complete negative and gelatin
silver print, then collage, photo collage,
photograms (being, perhaps, the first
Czech to make them), and photomontage,
all done with great effect in black and
white; while in his last decades he creates
superbly evocative color images.
For viewers today, circa 2004, Rösslers
independence remains perhaps his greatest
distinction. A poet of the constructed
image rather than a constructivist, as
Mathew Witkovsky notes in his essay on
Rössler; designer of abstractions
infected with ambiguity and psychological
charge; integral with poetism during its
ascendance; celebrated by surrealists;
affected by informalism, we would do well
to make of our encounter with Rössler
a study of the deeper struggles of the
imagination and the strategies required
of artists in the world we face. In this
regard, I do not take Rösslers
refusal to sell his major workfor
which he gained most recognitionsave
for what he produced as a "professional
photographer" in advertising, which
even then brought him irregular compensation,
as a symptom of personal conflicts alone.
With Rössler, the photographic image
becomes something more than a reflection
of, or window into, the reality we face
but a realty that reflects what we bring
to it, opening up an interaction that
rarely leaves us dispassionate. The recent
release of the current monograph, with
178 illustrations (134 full-size), and
six important essays and chronology, returns
to us a world of light, shadow, people,
and objects both quotidian and hybrid
whose resonance remains.
Here, then, is Jaroslav Rössler,
born 1902, died 1990.