Maker/Artist
Funke, Jaromír
Czech photographer and theorist, 1896-1945
Born 1 August 1896; died 22 March 1945. Funke was a co-founder with Joseph Sudek of the Czech Photographic Society in 1924, and is one of the premier representatives of Czech modernist photography of the 1920s and 1930s . He advocated for the abandonment of old-fashioned methods of representation and the use of unique effects available in the photographic medium, such as the photogram. His images rest squarely in the functionalist and constructivist school of the Soviet avant-garde. He photographed urban architecture and still lifes, always with an emphasis on extreme angles and diagonal lines. In 1931 he had his first exhibition in Prague. He served as a professor of photography at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava, 1931-1935; then at the Prague School of Graphic Arts until 1944. During this time he published a book and was the editor of a photography journal. He was forced into hard labor during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and died soon after.
