Josef Jindrich Sechtl

Early years

Josef Jindrich Sechtl was born in Tabor, South Bohemia, on May 9, 1877 as the second of three children. His father, Ignac Sechtl, had opened his photographic studio in Tabor in 1876, and thus Josef Jindrich was influenced by photography from his childhood.

After finishing lower high school in Tabor, the boy was particularly interested in chemigraphy (a method of printing photographs). In 1891 (at the age of 14) he started to work as a trainee in the polygraphic factory of Jan Vilim in Prague. After two years, in 1893, he changed jobs to work as a photographer in the studio of Frantisek Kratky in Kolin. Kratky's studio specialized in stereoscopy and publishing photographs as educational tools, allowing Josef Jindrich to further develop his interests in photographic printing. His certificate of a completed apprenticeship, written in 1906 by his father Ignac Sechtl, also certifies his studies in the Sechtl & Vosecek studios in the period 1892-1895, apparently in parallel with his jobs in Prague and Kolin. At 22, after serving in the army (1898–1899), he started work in the affiliated Sechtl & Vosecek studio in Cernovice u Tabora, a town near Tabor. At this time his father Ignac was travelling with his cinematograph (motion pictures), and the Tabor studio was run by Ignac's partner Jan Vosecek.

Photographic career

Josef Jindrich Sechtl had a wide variety of interests in photography, including portrait photography, photojournalism, documenting changes in the town of Tabor, photography of architecture, film, color photography using the Autochrome process, street photography using an early Leica camera, and fine art photography influenced by photographic pictorialism (including use of the bromoil process).

Since the photographs from the Sechtl & Vosecek studio are not usually signed by the particular photographer, it is not clear which photographs taken during 1897-1911 were taken by Josef Jindrich or Ignac Sechtl. Josef Jindrich's influence on the work of studio is however apparent. Soon after the start of his career, the studio started to publish large photo essays on important events, and produced postcards signed Sechtl & Vosecek. The earliest of these larger photo essays — from an exhibition in Sedlcany, the Sokol gymnastic festival (Slet), or the arrival of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I — contained about twenty photographs each. The essays however quickly grew larger, and the Regional Exhibition in Tabor in 1902 was recorded in over 100 photographs.

The main source of income for the studio however remained its studio work, in which Josef Jindrich excelled: despite the provincial location of the studio, his works were comparable with those of the best Czech portrait studios. His work is influenced by photographic pictorialism. He used various visual aids and decorations to help express the personality of his subjects, often with a gentle sense of humor. His skilful use of light and contrast with shadows achieved stunning visual effects.

Josef Jindrich Sechtl became a partner in the Sechtl & Vosecek studio in 1904 and took complete control in 1911 after the death of his father. Under his lead the studio prospered, and in 1906 he opened an affiliated studio in Pelhrimov, while the studio also participated in the Imperial Austrian Exhibition in London. In 1907, a new and modern studio was built on the main street of Tabor.

The photographic work of Josef Jindrich was very much influenced by Anna Stocka, whom he married in 1911. Anna loved art, and thanks to her charm the family befriended several artists living in Tabor, in particular the sculptor Jan Vitezslav Dusek. In 1912 Josef Jindrich and Anna's daughter Ludmila was born, and all seemed well. Josef Jindrich didn't serve in the army during World War I, and thus had a chance to record life in Tabor during this period, including the fire that significantly damaged the Tabor studio in 1917. He recorded the fire in a unique photo-essay, with several snapshots made on small-format sheet film, and for a record, a "reconstructed scene" made afterwards as an exact reconstruction of one of the snapshots, on a 13×18 cm glass plate negative.

Much more disastrous for his life than the fire was the death of Anna from a kidney disorder in 1925 just six months after, and precipitated by, the birth of their son, Josef Ferdinand Ignac. His second marriage, to teacher Bozena Bulinova, in 1926, wasn't as happy; and Josef Jindrich began to concentrate more on work in the studio and less on family life.

In 1928 Josef Jindrich bought a Leica camera and started recording life on 35mm film. His collected work on 35mm gives an interesting insight into the daily life of the photographer, his vacations in Jachymov and Yugoslavia, and his trip to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 with his friend the sculptor Jan Vitezslav Dusek, as well as events of the Second World War and the early years of communist Czechoslovakia.

During the life of Josef Jindrich, photography changed from a job that could be taken up and practised fairly freely to a regulated craft: first for portrait photography in 1911, and later in 1926 (despite the protests of many amateur photographers) it was declared a full-scale craft, requiring apprenticeship and a permit to practice. In 1948, the new communist government socialised all services, including photographic studios. The Sechtl & Vosecek studio was turned into a syndicate and nationalized in 1951 and, as a former tradesman, Josef Jindrich Sechtl was granted a small pension (200 Kcs per month).

Josef Jindrich Sechtl died in Tabor on February 24, 1954, aged 76.

Fine art photography

The Sechtl & Vosecek studios were advertised as artistic studios with a special focus on portraits of women and children. Josef Jindrich Sechtl did a number of works in fine art photography; however, most of these photographic prints either have been lost or are in private collections. Many of his architectural photographs have a great artistic quality, in particular those of the old town of Tabor, and his booklet Kutna Hora on that town.

He was among the few professional photographers in the Bohemia experimenting successfully with the bromoil process and Autochrome processes.

Photo essays

Josef Jindrich Sechtl did most of his work in the limits of the Tabor region of southern Bohemia. However, within these limits, he captured a number of important historical events, and portrayed in great detail life in the Czech countryside. A number of his photo essays have been preserved, either on glass plate negatives or on nitrate films. Until 1911 the photo essays were done in collaboration with his father, Ignac Sechtl, and until the 1930s, with Jan Vosecek.

Josef Jindrich Sechtl was, from 1927, among the first photographers in Czechoslovakia to use the Leica 35mm film camera.

Selected photo essays preserved in the archive:

Archive of the negatives

After the death of Josef Jindrich Sechtl the glass plate negatives remained stored in the building of the former Sechtl and Vosecek studio and were inherited by his son Josef Sechtl. Josef worked as the head of the new syndicate into which the former Sechtl and Vosecek studio was turned, and his wife Marie Sechtlova worked as an employee. The communist regime was afraid of what might be seen in Josef Jindrich's photo essays made during the Nazi occupation, and particularly worried that its own members might be revealed as having collaborated. The family was asked to pass the negatives to the "cultural house" (Dum Osvety) but decided to keep them in private ownership. As a result, Josef Sechtl was arrested in November 1957 and jailed for one year (ostensibly for taking a photograph of a wedding without permission to practise as a photographer) and the majority of the archive was confiscated shortly afterwards. Marie Sechtlova was tipped off about the impending confiscation, and the night before it brought what she thought were the most important negatives into their new house. A considerable amount of the confiscated material was destroyed but the rest was stored in the Regional Archive in Tabor. In the 1970s the syndicate was relocated to the main square and the Tabor studio destroyed to allow the Hotel Palcat to be built in its place. This led to the destruction of most of the cameras, photographic prints and other items still in the attic of the building. The studio in Pelhrimov (an important example of functionalist architecture by Karel Chochola) survived but was significantly damaged by being abandoned and allowed to decay for years. A result of these events was that the work of Josef Jindrich Sechtl was rarely presented during the communist period.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 the Pelhrimov studio was returned to Marie Sechtlova. A book that was already in preparation presenting photographs of Ignac Sechtl, Josef Jindrich Sechtl, Josef Sechtl and Marie Sechtlova was published. In 2004 a project to digitize and publish on the internet the surviving negatives by Sechtl and Vosecek studios was started, and the private Sechtl and Vosecek Museum of Photography was opened in Tabor.