Abeceda dusevniho prazdna

Zdenek Tmej
Abeceda dusevniho prazdna

Photographs: Zdenék Tmej

Text: Alexandra Urbanova

Publisher: Nakladatelství Zádruha, Praha

162 pages

Pictures: 44

Year: 1946

Comments: Softcover, under illustrated dustjacket, 24,5 x 21,2 cm. First edition. B&W photographs beautifully reproduced in a rich gravure printing. In very good condition other a small tear on the back of the jacket. Quite unusual for this title with this fragile dust jacket.

Apart from Jindřich Štyrský's Na jehlách těchto dní (On the Needles of These Days), the war inspired a number of fine Czech photobooks, including another with a memorable title, Zdenek Tmej's ABECEDA (Alphabet).

Whereas the former is an elliptical look at the psychological state induced by war, Tmej's book is a remarkable document of his war experiences (psychological and otherwise). It is also a beautitully produced, if fragile, book, a strange combination of luxury and cheapness: lusciously inked gravure printing on rough paper that is little better than newsprint.

When Tmej was forced, like many young Czechs, to work for the Nazi war effort in Breslau, he had the foresight to carry two cameras in his backpack on his way to a doubtful future in Germany, and the courage and perspicacity to use them. Apparentiy the Gestepo found the images, but (clearly misunderstanding their potency as pictures) allowed him to keep them as sau-venirs. The resulting book, distilled from around 200 neg-atives, is notable not simply for its historical value, but also for Tmej's ability to make formally elegant images that are invested with a poetic weight that is quite remarkable given the circumstances of their making.

Tmej contrasts the bleak interiors of the empty workmen's quarters - a ballroom with rows of bunks and mattresses on the floor - with their cramped condition when full to overflowing with depressed, demoralized humanity. Anonymity is his watchword as he charts the dehumanizing effect of men being forced unwillingly from their homes to live in overcrowded accommo-dation, fed only gruel on enamel plates. Perhaps the most telling sequence in the book is at the end, in a series taken in the 'foreigners-only' brothels arranged by the Nazis for the workers' leisure time. In these haunting, sad images, the desperation and loneliness of both the women and their clients is made manifest in the forced gaiety and bleak anonymity of their exchanges; a world of spiritual emptiness made eloquently clear.