Drahomír Josef Růžička

1870–1960

Růžička (American, born Czech, 1870-1960) came from a Czech family that immigrated to the United States in 1876. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and finished his studies in New York. In 1894 he opened his own private medical practice in New York. He started to photograph intensively in 1909, took a course in photography with Clarence Hudson White, and in 1916 became a founding member of the Pictorial Photographers of America. From 1921 to 1923 he lived in Czechoslovakia where he helped his family. Later he returned to Czechoslovakia regularly until 1936. His exhibition in Prague in 1921, where he exclusively exhibited straight photographs without the use of pigment processes, influenced a number of Czech photographers. His earlier work, emphasizing a luminous atmosphere and soft drawing, belongs among the most marked examples of purist Pictorialism.