Bodies, Desires, Identities. The Photography of Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek is an internationally renowned, yet academically unexplored photographer who makes staged, black and white (but often hand-coloured) photographs: obviously arranged, and erotically charged, images of the naked, semi-naked or dramatically costumed body. In this paper I present the work of Saudek, especially his performative self-portraits, and discuss the question of desire and subjectivity in relation to these images. I propose that there is an ambivalent desire at play here: Saudek’s "theatre of the body" indicates a need to be visually confirmed as an Ego, but also a need to be visually confirmed as a continually changing Other. His staged photography does in this way show a narcissistic and exhibitionistic desire to be Someone without being entirely trapped as this Someone.