Fotografika

#1 min Tomáš Pospěch

Josef Sudek – Otto Rothmayer. Návštěva u pana kouzelníka, Prague: UPM, 2022

#1 min Tomáš Pospěch

Martin Charvát. Elektro-fotografické imaginárno. Přízraky mezi fotografií a elektřinou. Prague: NAMU, 2023

#1 min Tomáš Pospěch

Jitka Hlaváčková (ed.). Věštění z noční oblohy částečně zakryté mraky. Role fotografie v postmediální době, Prague: GHMP 2022

#1 min Tomáš Pospěch

Jaromír Čejka. Stopy, Prague: KANT 2023

#4 min Tomáš Pospěch

What will Prague or New York look like in a thousand or two thousand years? My aim here is not to contribute to the dystopian genre, so popular today. But we do have a sufficient historical experience of the emergence and demise of civilizations. It is therefore not so hard to imagine that where New York City used to stand, waves will beat against the remaining concrete foundations of a few skyscrapers and Prague too will be reduced to the ruins of a few of the most significant buildings – if the city isn’t entirely abandoned, that is. Without depicting these scenes directly, such notions might follow from Josef Koudelka’s newest photographic series, titled Ruins.

#10 min Tomáš Pospěch

The ubiquity and primary biological need for food predetermine that food has undoubtedly been photographed by every photographer at some point. Furthermore, "gourmet pictures" enjoy great popularity nowadays. According to surveys, they are among the most liked pictures on Instagram and food bloggers are becoming "celebrities", bringing here joy, there wrinkles to waiters. There is a growing interest in the origin of ingredients, food blogs multiply, reality cooking shows are on TV, and restaurants with an open view of the kitchen pop up increasingly often. We are experiencing a turn in thinking about the appearance of our food and forms of eating. 

#3 min Tomáš Pospěch

Apart from studying law in Wroclaw, the Polish author Agnieszka Sejud also studied at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava. Her training, therefore, is in photography, even though she presents herself more as a visual artist and activist in her work, often as a member of the art duo KWAS, which she forms with her ICP classmate Karolina Wojtas.

#24 min Tomáš Pospěch

In the West, the late 1980s and early 1990s also brought a wave of extraordinary interest in Czech and Slovak photography, which never returned. Let us try to find out what it meant. Were we ready for such an interest? Which activities do those who still remember the times recall most? What institutions could help in providing contacts and preparing exhibitions abroad? At that time, most exhibitions in Western Europe or the USA were retrospectives. They had no concept and they looked back at the 1980s, presenting contemporary Czech and Slovak photography or photographic avant-garde. Exhibitions presenting a perspective of foreign curators were another story, although their approach had been formed by those who introduced them to the scene. The exhibitions were important for the assessment of the Czechoslovak scene and long-term promotion of local photography in the coming years. Last, but not least, they brought satisfaction to photographers who worked in socialist Czechoslovakia. Some of them managed to gain momentum, meet festival directors, curators and collectors, have solo exhibitions, or teach abroad.  Until then, Czechoslovak photography had been collected only by the Moravian Gallery in Brno (since 1962) and the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague (since 1970). Aside from the activities of Antonín Dufek from the Moravian Gallery, there was no institution or gallery that photographers could rely on. The exhibitions abroad were prepared with enthusiasm, no funding, and a little help from the represented authors. Some photographers, such as Vladimír Birgus and Miroslav Vojtěchovský, relied on the Department of Photography at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague  where they worked, although the Academy had primarily a different mission.  A tour of ten photographers to the United States after the Velvet Revolution was enthusiastically described in an article by Pavel Štecha for Československá fotografie magazine and in the interview with Martin Matějů published in the next issue of the magazine.1 Both informed about the journey to the FotoFest in Houston in 1990, i.e. the exhibition of Czech and Slovak photography, Choice 19. Perspectives – Real and Imaginary, prepared by Weny Watriss and Frederick Baldwin. In his article, Štecha introduced the FotoFest, its atmosphere, and the genesis of the Czech exhibition. “Given the events in [Czechoslovakia] and all over Eastern Europe, we were in the spotlight. Moreover, we were the most numerous group and President Havel was going to America at that time, and people actually might have also liked the exhibition. (...) In fact, they were stopping by and congratulating us all the time, and to top it all, the New York Times published a very positive review. At the same time, Life published a number of photographs of the [Velvet Revolution] events in November. Some of us were interviewed on American television, and later on the radio...”