Jan Saudek's metal mailbox is covered in soft brown-hued lipstick kisses.

"People ring my doorbell all the time. I never answer," he says.

At 70 years, Saudek, arguably the Czech Republic's most famous living photographer, still breaks women's hearts — "They try to pick me up all the time on the tram," he says — and has no shortage of female models begging to be photographed.

In his upstairs studio in a quiet building on a quiet street in Žižkov, Saudek is already in interview mode. His compact, less-than-5-foot-5 frame fills the room as he jumps up from his chair to illustrate an athletic feat he performed the previous night:

"You have to have really strong stomach muscles. I was drunk and I was showing off. It was comical."

Part superhero, part rock star, he sports tight black trousers, heavy boots and a flaming red shirt that opens at the top to reveal a gold chain around his neck — the same outfit that appears in most of Saudek's recent photographs in tabloid papers. His current retrospective exhibition, showing at a gallery on Staroměstské náměstí, carries a name that sounds more like an album title than an art show: The Best of Jan Saudek.

The studio, dark with heavy red drapes, a stately bed, leather couches, the floor strewn with theatrical props — mannequin hands and elaborate costumes — is one of several Saudek maintains. All have nearly identical versions of the famous mold-stained wall from a different Žižkov atelier, in a different era, which served as the backdrop in the majority of Saudek's photographs. The light in the room is artificial, emanating from big, heavy photographer's lamps mounted on a rail along the ceiling.

"Sárinka, that was some night yesterday. You should have seen it," he says to the woman seated in an armchair across from him. She is tall, angular, somewhat masculine and very beautiful. Formerly Saudek's muse, now a photographer in her own right, Sára Saudková, who took Saudek's last name although the two were never married, sits quietly, ready to parry any of Saudek's comments with a biting repost. Her business card reads "Jan's right hand."

Saudek picks up a near-empty Ballantine whisky bottle off a table and eyes it approvingly. "I drank almost a liter of this. Now, that's a pretty manly amount.

"I'm a primitive, and I'm proud of it," he declares once he sits back down.

'Photography is a lie'

Most people would probably disagree. Although Saudek's highly stylized, hand-colored and often erotically charged photographs have been labeled as kitsch and in poor taste by many critics, he has a cult following around the world. His style has changed very little over his 50-year career, yet the photos continue to speak to a very wide audience.

The themes in Saudek's photographs are universal: the different faces of love, parenthood, the passage of time. He enjoys blurring boundaries. Many of his photographs show children dressed as adults or women dressed as men. People in the nude interact with people who are fully clothed. There are people in positions of power and others in submission: Large, robust, big-breasted women, as well as women who appear very frail and vulnerable.

Saudek celebrates the human body in all its various shapes, but he characterizes the nudity in his work as a means rather than an end. "It reflects my lifelong curiosity to find out what people are like beneath their clothes," he says.

Not all of Saudek's photographs are erotic. His favorite picture, for instance, is one of his father standing in a cemetery. And his most famous and perhaps most imitated photo shows the torso of a man — Saudek himself — clutching a newborn infant to his chest.

In the current exhibition, Saudek's recent works are on display alongside his classics. But lately, he's shifted much of his focus to painting. When he does take photos, he no longer colors the prints but leaves them black and white.

"Coloring the photos was very false. I was just trying to be popular," says Saudek, toying with a revolver — a prop, he says, with the barrel stopped up. "All photography is a lie," he continues. "It's definitely not art, because a machine is doing the work for you."

There doesn't appear to be a trace of irony in his voice.

"I have contempt for intellectuals, and they have contempt for me," says the man who off-handedly quotes Francois Rebelais and Immanuel Kant.

'I'm a tragic figure'

But when Saudek points out that most photographers around the world know his name, and yet he doesn't have a single award aside from the French Order of Arts and Letters, there is a palpable tone of regret in his voice. "They never even invited me to do a single lecture at FAMU [Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague]," he adds later.

Perhaps it's little wonder, then, that Saudek tries to distance himself in every way from the critic-approved art world.

"Popular opinion is one thing, and the opinion of official critics is another," he says. "To them I don't exist. But that doesn't prevent me from drinking half a liter of whisky."

This is the pattern: Saudek appears to shake off things that evidently trouble him with a wave of the hand, but then keeps returning to them. And he constantly undermines himself.

"I may come across as an exhibitionist, a jester, and I really do want to be famous and popular, but I'm also a sad and lonely person. I'm a tragic figure." he says. "Of course, most women see right through me because women are wise."

"That lady yesterday, Sárina," he says, suddenly turning to Saudková. "She said if it wasn't me, Saudek the photographer, no one would bother talking to me."

"Well, it's rare to hear something that honest," notes Saudková.

"And I was pleased to hear it," he retorts, but doesn't sound entirely happy.