John Sadovy; photojournalist known for his photographs of the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
Hyfler/Rosner
John Sadovy, who died on December 21 aged 85, was a photojournalist
known for his photographs of the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
When Life magazine released six of his pictures to the Associated Press,
they were run by hundreds of newspapers across the United States
Later that year the images won the Robert Capa Award for “superlative
photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad”.
Covering the revolution was indeed extremely dangerous; for most of his
pictures, the 31-year-old Sadovy waded into the thick of the fighting
with a pair of old Leica cameras, using a 35-mm wide-angle lens at close
range. His most memorable sequence shows four frames, taken in rapid
succession, of rebels cutting down security police as they poured out of
a Communist headquarters.
Sadovy was the first of only a few photojournalists to infiltrate
Hungary during its tumultuous revolution, recording the atrocities being
committed. With the journalist Tim Foote, who was later wounded in the
fighting, he slipped past border guards at night in an old Volkswagen.
His astonishing, violent and graphic photographs of the uprising were
the first to show the world what was happening at a time when
photojournalism was still the window on to global events.
In the editorial published with the pictures Sadovy wrote: “Another
[security policeman] came out, running. He saw his friends dead, turned
and headed into the crowds. The rebels dragged him out. I had time to
take one picture of him and he was down. Then my nerves went. Tears
started to come down my cheeks. I had spent three years in the war, but
nothing I saw then compared with the horror of this.
“I could see the impact of bullets on clothes. There was not much noise.
They were shooting so close that the man’s body acted as a silencer ...
Going back through the park, I saw women looking for their men among the
bodies on the ground. I sat down on a tree trunk. My knees were
beginning to give in. It was from the weight of it. Like carrying
something I couldn’t carry any more. In some way one is responsible for
what other humans do.”
During the 1950s Sadovy worked freelance around Europe and the Middle
East, contributing extensively to the major publications of the day,
including Life, Time, Vogue, Paris Match and Picture Post. His many
assignments produced intriguing, humorous and often disturbing images
and more than once threatened his life.
His photodocumentary, fashion and portrait work bought Sadovy into
contact with leading personalities and celebrities of the day — among
them Brigitte Bardot, Joyce Grenfell, Noël Coward, Audrey Hepburn,
Margot Fonteyn, Yehudi Menuhin, Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich,
Mohammed Ali, Elizabeth Taylor and Rita Hayworth. In the 1960s he set up
his own business and worked for many of the major advertising and
fashion names of the time. In the 1970s he established a printing firm,
Mill House Press, teaching himself the trade from books, and delivering
top quality art and printwork.
John Sadovy was born on a small farm at the village of Piosek, in
eastern Czechoslovakia, on October 29 1925. As a young teenager he
dreamed of being a photographer and bought his first camera — a
cast-iron SIDA — by mail order from Germany, having raised the money by
selling knives, harmonicas and cutlery boxes at a profit to friends and
neighbours.
He was entirely self-taught. At times this meant learning the hard way;
after ruining many portraits of friends and relatives, he discovered
that processing required not only developing but also a second,
fixation, step. In 1939, aged 14, he left his village and was accepted
to join the Polish Eighth Army in Italy under British command.
Demobbed in 1948 with just a suit, a brown hat and £6, Sadovy could have
opted to return to Czechoslovakia but did not relish life as a farmer.
In an army camp at Helmsley, Yorkshire, he learned English, then found
work in a photographic studio at Scarborough. He was taken in by a local
couple, Bill and Tizzie Boddy, who became lifelong friends.
In 1949 Sadovy moved to London to begin building a portfolio. For 15
months he survived on two shillings a day, living on liver sausage and
bread and taking photos of animals and people; he recalled being
particularly disturbed by the conditions in zoos, a reflection of his
lifelong affection for animals.
The turning point came in 1951, when he was down to his last two rolls
of film. He used them both on a group of swans preening themselves on
Chiswick pond and made the rounds of London magazines. Two days later
Picture Post telephoned: “The editors want to use your pictures. Will
£40 be enough?” He put down a £5 deposit on a £200 Studebaker and, after
his first driving lesson, drove it north to visit friends in Scarborough
for Christmas.
In 1953 Sadovy married an English girl, Pamela, and became a British
subject. Working freelance for Life, in 1955 he moved his young family
to the outskirts of Paris, where they set up home in a custom-built
caravan, complete with dark room. When Life needed somebody for Budapest
in 1956, Sadovy’s knowledge of Czech, Polish and German helped to win
him the assignment. He moved to Rome in 1957, returning to Britain two
years later.
Sadovy won many awards for his work. A charismatic, daring and
unconventional man, he used to say that photography was his “religion”.
In 1983 John Sadovy suffered the first of many strokes, and gave up
work. He is survived by his first wife and their two daughters, and by
his second wife, Andree Gabrielle, whom he married in 1975.
Hyfler/Rosner
From The Telegraph