Zdeněk Tmej The Alphabet of Spiritual Emptiness

URBANOVÁ, Alexandra (text) & TMEJ, Zdeněk (photographs) — Abeceda duševního prázdna [The Alphabet of Spiritual Emptiness]. Prague: Zádruha, 1946. First edition. 4to. Unpaginated. A cornerstone of Czech wartime documentary photography, pairing Alexandra Urbanová’s minimalist prose with forty-five clandestine images taken by Zdeněk Tmej while interned in a German forced labour camp in Breslau, 1942–44. These quiet, intimate scenes—sleeping workers, bare interiors, sparse meals—are rendered in rich photogravure, forming an unflinching yet poetically restrained record of spiritual desolation under captivity. Regarded as one of the most important and artistically accomplished photobooks to emerge from the Second World War, its perspective from within the camp is exceptionally rare in the history of the medium. This copy handsomely rebound in black cloth with silver-lettered spine; internally clean and complete. One plate with a 5 cm hairline tear, expertly repaired on verso with archival tape. Without original wrappers. Inv. H4ob