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Eugen Wiskovsky (1888 - 1964)
Eugen Wiskovsky was born in 1888 and died in 1964. He was a Czech avant-garde photographer. His oeuvre is not large in size or range of topics, yet it is great owing to its originality, depth of ideas, and mastery of form. In his early works, from the late 1920s and early 1930s, in the style of New Objectivity, Wiskovsky sought artistically effective forms in apparently nonaesthetic objects. By the use of crops, changing scale, and inventive lighting, he freed them from secondary aspects, allowing the elementary lines of these forms to stand out. He often emphasized potential metaphorical meanings as well. In his dynamic diagonal compositions, Wiskovsky was among the most radical practioners of Czech Constructivist photography. Similarly, his landscape work is highly individual, sometimes employing form analogies to accentuate visual symbols.