Introduction by Michel Tournier, one of the greatest French novelists of our time, and the author of a great book on photography.

Born in Prague in 1935, Jan Saudek achieved fame for his theatrical and controversial photographs of male, female, couple, and orgiastic nudes, which allude both to photography's connection to painting and the whole history of Western portraiture as well as to pornographic pictures shot in studios. His embrace of the pleasures and pains of the human experience is directly evident in his work as is the unencumbered celebration of all people. Blending eroticism with tenderness, violence with Romanticism in a way that longs for the sublime, Saudek earned a considerable international cult following before becoming an important and highly influential mainstream figure. "I don't have the capacity to portray other people's lives. I am portraying my own" (Jan Saudek).

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