page_title: Josef Jindřich Šechtl
section_title: Photographic career
hierarchical_section_title: Josef Jindřich Šechtl / Photographic career
caption_attribution_description: Advertisement photograph used by Šechtl and Voseček studios in Tábor, approx 1907, picturing the new studio itself.
context_page_description: Josef Jindřich Šechtl was a Czech photographer who specialized in photojournalism and portrait photography. On the death of his father, photographer Ignác Šechtl, Josef inherited the photographic studios of Šechtl & Voseček.
context_section_description: Josef Jindřich Šechtl had a wide variety of interests in photography, including portrait photography, photojournalism, documenting changes in the town of Tábor, 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 Šechtl & Voseček studio are not usually signed by the particular photographer, it is not clear which photographs taken during 1897–1911 were taken by Josef Jindřich or Ignác Šechtl. Josef Jindřich'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 Šechtl & Voseček. The earliest of these larger photo essays — from an exhibition in Sedlčany, 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 Tábor in 1902 was recorded in over 100 photographs.
  The main source of income for the studio however remained its studio work, in which Josef Jindřich 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 Jindřich Šechtl became a partner in the Šechtl & Voseček 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 Pelhřimov, 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 Tábor.
  The photographic work of Josef Jindřich was very much influenced by Anna Stocká, whom he married in 1911. Anna loved art, and thanks to her charm the family befriended several artists living in Tábor, in particular the sculptor Jan Vítězslav Dušek. In 1912 Josef Jindřich and Anna's daughter Ludmila was born, and all seemed well. Josef Jindřich didn't serve in the army during World War I, and thus had a chance to record life in Tábor during this period, including the fire that significantly damaged the Tábor 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 Ignác. His second marriage, to teacher Božena Bulínová, in 1926, wasn't as happy; and Josef Jindřich began to concentrate more on work in the studio and less on family life.
  In 1928 Josef Jindřich 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 Jáchymov and Yugoslavia, and his trip to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 with his friend the sculptor Jan Vítězslav Dušek, as well as events of the Second World War and the early years of communist Czechoslovakia.
  During the life of Josef Jindřich, 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 Šechtl & Voseček studio was turned into a syndicate and 
caption: Contemporary advertisement picturing the new studio and reading "The largest art studio of photographers Šechtl and Voseček in Tábor". The studio was often described as the largest in South Bohemia or the Czech countryside.
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