
Memories by plane
A hauntingly poetic gelatin silver print by Czech master Josef Sudek, this work evokes a dreamlike sense of longing and recollection through his signature interplay of soft light and shadow. Sudek's masterful tonal range transforms what may be an aerial or abstracted perspective into a meditative visual reverie, blurring the boundary between the tangible world and the ethereal realm of memory. The image carries his characteristic contemplative stillness, inviting the viewer to drift into a deeply personal and melancholic space suspended between the real and the imagined.
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print.
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Photographs
November 7, 2013
More by Josef Sudek
Artists in conversation

Edward Weston
American · b. 1886

Weston shared Sudek's devotion to gelatin silver printing and a meditative stillness in his compositions, transforming everyday subjects into luminous, tonally rich black and white studies that blur the line between the physical and the transcendent.
Albert Renger-Patzsch
German · b. 1897
Renger-Patzsch worked in the same modernist black and white photographic tradition, using precise tonal gradations and a contemplative eye to elevate ordinary or abstracted subjects into poetic visual meditations.
Clarence John Laughlin
American · b. 1905
Laughlin created hauntingly poetic gelatin silver prints that similarly dissolve the boundary between memory and reality, employing soft light, deep shadow, and a dreamlike pictorialist sensibility to evoke longing and psychological depth.
Start the Discussion
Request access to join the discussion