November, 1999 "A heretic" states Antonin Dufek "is a man whose truth is so compact that he cannot come to terms with conventions. Such was Josef Sudek, a photographer with only one hand." Not only texts, but editing, typography, sequencing, design, printing quality are all equally remarkable in the newly released Josef Sudek book El Silencio de las cosas (The Silence of Things),which spans thirty years of the great Czech artist's career and is published by Marta Gili at Fundación La Caixa in Barcelona. Sudek almost never left Prague and Czechoslovakia. He photographed twisted and snow-weighed trees, his garden, the doomed industrial landscapes of the North, miniature landscapes seen through the mist of his studio's window. Inside, he focused on simple still-life arrangements of fruit, eggs and goblets and the labyrinths of crumpled paper, crystal and books in his never-disturbed room. All these things he loved with passionate attention to their physical apperance and spiritual aura. Sudek's photographs fill us with wonder and longing. Rainer Maria Rilke's words, written in 1925, come to mind: "Things endowed with life, lived things, conscious of us, are in decline and will not be replaced. We are perhaps the last who once more will know such things." Still life in the window, 1965 From the series "Labyrinths," 1967 Still life in a photographer's studio, 1960 To order the book and a catalogue of other publications, email: mgili.fundacio@lacaixa.es