At traditional fairs, kitsch, fantasy, commerce and childhood memories come together without restraint. Saturated colours, illuminated signs, inflatable figures, painted backdrops and reflections in glass create a kind of visual noise in which reality merges with illusion. For a brief time, the fair creates a world of its own – vivid, noisy and ever-changing, built from rides, images, lights and the promise of entertainment. Technologies, attractions and forms of amusement may change, yet the essential nature of the fair has remained remarkably similar across generations: a temporary world removed from everyday life, shaped by spectacle, anticipation and shared experience.
The series COLOUR NOISE was photographed at fairs across the Czech Republic between 2024 and 2026. The photographs neither judge nor ironise this environment. Instead, they capture its energy, its many layers and the peculiar visual order that emerges from apparent chaos. People become part of the scenery, blending into advertisements, figures and reflections, or, conversely, suddenly standing out among them for a fleeting moment. The photographs embrace an abundance of visual stimuli while at the same time searching for subtle relationships, gestures and chance connections. What at first appears to be a jumble of colours and forms gradually comes together into images poised somewhere between observed reality and an imaginary world.
Filip Brož (*1989, Hradec Králové) first encountered photography as a child through the compact cameras used by his father. He began pursuing it more seriously with the advent of digital photography and, later, the smartphone. Initially, his work focused primarily on landscape and documentary photography.
Professionally, he worked as a newspaper journalist, combining writing with photography and reportage. Over time, his attention increasingly shifted towards the street and the everyday situations that unfold without staging or a predetermined script.
His work focuses on everyday life and is rooted in the belief that compelling photographs do not have to be made in distant or extraordinary places, but can emerge from attentive observation of one’s immediate surroundings.
In 2026, he became a member of the VERUM PHOTO creative collective.
At the turn of the millennium. A respected president addresses a society in transition from closed to open. His communication, free of platitudes, his ability to name events and phenomena clearly, and his honesty and consistency inspire an outpouring of expression among the public, both verbal and visual. A society that has overcome its fear is eager to take an active part in improving public life. The immense hope of a small country in the heart of Europe becomes the driving force of a new era—one that captures the imagination of the entire world.
At its centre stands Prague Castle and President Václav Havel, documented between 1997 and 2003 by one of his official photographers, Karel Cudlín. The openness and sincerity of ordinary citizens are also reflected in their letters to the President. Karel Cudlín’s photographs portray the President with all the dignity of his office, yet also with a sensitivity to the magic of the moment and an eye for the absurd. Photographs and letters come together not only in the files of the Archives of the Office of the President of the Republic; a selection of them is also presented to the public in this exhibition as a tribute.
Eva Papoušková
(CV) Karel Cudlín (*1960, Prague) is a renowned Czech documentary photographer whose work has gained international recognition. He is the author of numerous thematic series exploring social and healthcare environments, paradigm shifts and the disappearance of old worlds and empires, the transformation of urban spaces, as well as artists’ studios and human creativity. He has repeatedly returned to Ukraine and spent thirty years documenting life in Israel.
(CV) Eva Papoušková (*1969, Brno) is a Czech writer, screenwriter and translator. She is the author of numerous books and has written scripts for a number of television series.
The stage has been an integral part of Viktor Kronbauer’s life since his birth in 1949. He began observing the world through the lens of a camera in 1970. Seven years later, he started collaborating with the publicity department of the Czech Philharmonic, where, over the course of seven years, he photographed numerous events, including the renowned Prague Spring International Music Festival.
On the recommendation of conductor Václav Neumann, Kronbauer subsequently applied for a position as a photographer at the Theatre Institute, where he was appointed and remained associated with the institution for a significant part of his professional career. A formative influence on his artistic development was his encounter with photographer Jaroslav Krejčí, from whom he learned a great deal during more than two decades of close collaboration.
Over the course of his career, Kronbauer has documented more than 1,500 theatre productions in the Czech Republic and abroad, including in Slovakia, Russia, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Austria. He has presented more than 130 solo exhibitions in the Czech Republic and internationally and has received numerous prestigious awards for his work.
His lifelong dedication to theatre photography was brought together in the 2017 monograph Viktor Kronbauer – Theatre Photography, which not only offers a comprehensive survey of his oeuvre but also serves as a unique visual chronicle of Czech theatre over the past four decades.
Julian Lennon presents the exhibition Mosaic at Leica Gallery Prague. Drawing on his book Life’s Fragile Moments, the exhibition captures the artist’s creative journey through a diverse range of photographic series. The first part traces Julian’s travels — from the vibrant energy of New York and the spirit of hope in Cuba to the distinctive landscapes of California’s Joshua Tree. The second part, dedicated to fellow musicians and rock artists, reveals his ability to enter the intimate world of his subjects with sensitivity and respect.
A clear parallel exists between his musical and visual talent — in both disciplines, he searches for rhythm, truth, and the essence of human experience. Julian approaches photography as an authentic medium for documenting diverse cultures and telling real stories instinctively and without unnecessary mediation. His passion for photography has become a natural extension of his artistic journey from music toward a visual interpretation of the world around us.
The exhibition offers a view through Julian’s lens as a testament to human integrity and to the meaningful connections that shape and define our lives.
(CV) Julian Lennon
Julian Lennon’s sensitive and poetic vision of life courses through his acclaimed music, photography and writing.
In music, Lennon’s melding of uplifting introspection and thoughtful social commentary with refined hooks has made for a compelling seven-album body of work. His debut, Valotte (Atlantic), yielded two top ten hits—the title track and “Too Late for Goodbyes”—and was nominated for a Grammy for “Best New Artist.” He went on to have #1 singles on the U.S. album rock charts. Internationally, one of his most popular songs, “Saltwater” charted successfully around the world, topping in Australia for four weeks and reaching #6 in the U.K. In 2022, Lennon returned with the critically acclaimed album, JUDE (BMG), which contained a personal and powerful array of songs that reflect relatable, universal themes.
An acclaimed fine arts photographer, Lennon has exhibited in galleries worldwide since 2010. In 2021, he partnered with Portia de Rossi’s General Public and RH to present a special collection, and in 2024, he presented his largest exhibition to date, “Whispers” took place at Le Stanze della Fotografia – an international center for research into the appreciation of photography and the culture of the image. The exhibition, curated by Lennon and Sandrina Bonetti Rubelli, showcased a rich body of work that traced Lennon’s diverse artistic journey, from his early days in music to his extensive portfolio in photography. Life’s Fragile Moments, Lennon’s first fine-art photography coffee table book, featuring over 200 photos spanning 17 years, was published by TeNeues in 2024 to great acclaim. It is now in its second printing.
A noted philanthropist, Julian founded The White Feather Foundation nonprofit in 2007 to help preserve and protect Indigenous cultures. Since then, the organization has expanded to help projects worldwide in the areas of Education, Health, Clean Water and The Environment. In 2015, in honour of his late mother, he launched The Cynthia Lennon Scholarship for Girls. Since its inception, it has awarded 87 scholarships to underprivileged girls across Africa, Asia, the U.K. and the U.S. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020. He also wrote the New York Times bestselling Touch the Earth trilogy, which focused on environmental themes for young readers.
As the founder of White Feather Films, he was an executive producer on the award-winning Netflix documentary, Kiss the Ground (2020), about the positive impact of regenerative agriculture, and its sequel, Common Ground (2023) as well as the celebrated Ai Wei Wei’s Turandot (2025).
Two visits to Cuba, nearly twenty years apart. During the first, I walked the streets every morning around six, holding a Nikon in my hands for the very first time, my backpack filled with rolls of film. Even then, I was captivated by the Cuban light—warm, soft, and enveloping. I had no idea that I would encounter something just as beautiful again only two decades later.
Havana bathed in the morning sun is the most beautiful sight I have ever witnessed through a camera lens. Cuba has changed in the meantime—more than I had expected. Many of the buildings that once felt extraordinarily photogenic have fallen into disrepair or disappeared altogether. Back then, guides would not show these places to foreign tourists, instead presenting carefully curated “Potemkin villages” of Havana, sometimes marked with plaques such as “Here Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea.”
Over time, poverty has deepened. Police have all but disappeared from the streets—there is hardly anyone left to control. For many Cubans, daily life has become a struggle to find even the most basic food, searching through waste in the city centre for something as meagre as a rotten tomato. Children, the elderly, and able-bodied men without work—all alike.
This time, we were no longer followed by secret police officers. Fear has faded, replaced by frustration with the current government and a strong sense of nostalgia for the late dictator, Fidel Castro.
And yet one thing remains unchanged: that extraordinary light—the kind that makes you rise before dawn, simply because you cannot do otherwise.
The photographs were taken for the book Cuban Tango in the Rhythm of Blues by Eduard Freisler, published by Edice N.
(CV) Renata Kalenská (*1974) is a journalist and passionate amateur photographer. She works for Deník N and Czech Radio Plus. She is currently writing her twelfth book. She is the recipient of the Ferdinand Peroutka Award and two Czech Journalism Awards.
Before the collective 400 ASA was formed, three of its future members—Karel Cudlín, Antonín Kratochvíl, and Jan Mihaliček—photographed Nagorno-Karabakh. A country that no longer exists. Each of them arrived at a different time, in a different place, under different circumstances.
Karel Cudlín captured, in his characteristically empathetic manner, the Armenian inhabitants of Karabakh striving to live their everyday lives in the mountains during a period of relative calm, around 2008. His photographs depict recurring, timeless moments of village life: baking bread, tending livestock. The works presented in the exhibition are his most recent.
Antonín Kratochvíl, one of the most internationally renowned photographers documenting crisis situations, recorded the lives of ethnic Azerbaijanis shortly before the turn of the millennium for UNHCR, following their exodus from villages in Karabakh that had come under Armenian control. He photographed large groups of displaced people living their daily lives in makeshift homes—abandoned freight wagons. Among his images is that of a small sapling, planted and tended daily by its caretaker, who hopes one day to die in its shade, having been forced to leave behind the mature trees of his former home.
The earliest photographs were taken by Jan Mihaliček in 1992, during the period of the so-called First War. He arrived in the remote mountain enclave with the first mission of the Lidové noviny Foundation, titled SOS Karabakh. They brought medicine, food, and, among other things, a field hospital. All of this needed to be documented and published in the press. This humanitarian effort was followed by others— there was no way to simply stop. Over time, this led to the creation of an organization now widely known as People in Need. For Mihaliček, then twenty-seven years old, those few days became a defining experience that fundamentally changed his view of the world. His lens captured refugees, partisans defending their villages, soldiers at the front, and the dead—together forming a stark image of the terror and despair brought by war.
Across the works of these three photographers—friends as well as witnesses—we see the horrors of war, the plight of refugees, but also the fragile process of post-war recovery in rare moments of calm. The exhibition speaks of a beautiful and deeply scarred land, of the futility of war, and above all of its greatest victims: ordinary people.
A book of the same title, based on the exhibited photographs, is currently in preparation. We would be grateful for your support in bringing it to life via www.donio.cz. Thank you.
Jan Mihaliček
(CV) Karel Cudlín (*1960) is a leading Czech documentary photographer and a professor at FAMU. He is known for his focus on everyday life, Roma communities, and his intimate photographs of Prague’s Žižkov district. Between 1997 and 2003, he served as one of the official photographers of President Václav Havel. He is a sixteen-time recipient of the Czech Press Photo award and a member of the 400 ASA collective.
(CV) Antonín Kratochvíl (*1947) is an internationally acclaimed Czech photographer and photojournalist, co-founder of the VII Photo Agency and recipient of the World Press Photo award. He is known for his dramatic war reportage and introspective portraits of prominent figures (including David Bowie and Willem Dafoe). He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and is a member of the 400 ASA collective.
(CV) Jan Mihaliček (*1965) is a Czech documentary photographer whose career began before 1989, photographing the skateboarding community and collaborating with samizdat publications. From December 1989, he worked as a photojournalist for Lidové noviny, covering war conflicts in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1997, he received first prize at Czech Press Photo for his reportage on the flooded city of Ostrava. Today, he works as a freelance photographer and cameraman, focusing on social themes and classical black-and-white documentary photography in the tradition of humanist photography. He is a member of the 400 ASA collective.
(CV) Miloslav Kubeš (1927–2008) was born in the South Bohemian village of Bošilec. After graduating from a technical secondary school, he moved to Prague to study philosophy. He completed his postgraduate studies and went on to earn his habilitation and doctoral degree. Philosophy became his lifelong academic profession. Photography, which he took up shortly after the war, became his personal passion—a means through which he explored people and the world around him. In the 1960s he worked with a Flexaret camera in square format, later expanding his practice to 35mm film. His documentary photography of the human figure is often interpreted through a sociological lens. It was essential to him that his subjects appear natural—self-contained, absorbed in themselves, unaware of the surrounding world. As a philosopher, he would theoretically justify each photograph before pressing the shutter. He sought to reveal the contrasts embedded in the life of his time. The central themes of Kubeš’s work thus became loneliness within the crowd and boredom amidst entertainment, observed across the various stages of human life—from childhood to old age.
In a strikingly timeless and universal manner, Kubeš portrayed the figure of Homo Consumens—the individual absorbed by consumer society. In doing so, he subtly challenged the notion that “to have” means “to be,” that one’s existence is measured by possession. Through photography, he pursued his philosophical inquiry: can a camera, capturing a human face, relationships, and events in a mere fraction of a second, penetrate beneath the surface of fleeting moments to reveal enduring human values? Is it possible to capture traits such as envy, boredom, loneliness, malice, love, or hatred? He sought answers to these questions precisely in his photographs. Following the political changes of 1968, Kubeš was never able to publicly exhibit or publish his work. His photographs remained literally closed away in boxes, and most were not printed in exhibition formats for many years.
The rediscovered oeuvre of Miloslav Kubeš is highly distinctive. Its rawness, interwoven with poetic sensitivity, achieves remarkable artistic depth. Some of his themes were strikingly ahead of their time. Through images of everyday life, he captured the unrepeatable atmosphere of Prague in the 1960s. His work enriches the history of Czech photography. Kubeš’s contribution lies in demonstrating how brilliant, witty, and intellectually rigorous amateur photography can reach a truly professional level and become an integral part of a society’s cultural tradition.
In 2008, his photographs were published by Kant in the monograph “Man, Who Are You?” Since then, his work has been exhibited both in the Czech Republic and abroad.
MgA. Daniel Šperl, Ph.D., Curator
Daniel Šperl has given himself an exhibition for his sixtieth birthday. From the outset, he decided to set aside the photographs made during his stays in Japan, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, Mongolia, and Ghana, and to select exclusively from works created in various regions of the Czech Republic. For months, he produced hundreds of traditional darkroom enlargements—enough to fill the Galerie Rudolfinum or the House at the Stone Bell to capacity. Leica Gallery Prague, however, is more intimate in scale. Some time ago, together with the gallery’s director Míla Dubská, I had to endure rather painful moments persuading Daniel Šperl that not all of his finely crafted and meticulously framed photographs could fit within this space, and that some would have to be omitted. I understand all too well the mercilessness of such conditions. As I know from experience, the author’s decision about which photograph to exhibit and which to exclude can at times resemble the situation in Styron’s famous novel Sophie’s Choice.
In the end, however, everything turned out well. The result is an exhibition that is united—despite its thematic diversity—by a distinctive visual language and by the artist’s ability to uncover extraordinary, poetic, and at times almost spectral moments within everyday life. Many photographs not included here remain for what would surely be a truly comprehensive retrospective that Šperl undoubtedly deserves.
In both parts of the exhibition—whether in the selection of photographs made primarily in rural settings and small towns, or in the cycle Homo Pragensis—Šperl develops the tradition of humanist photography, which he came to know particularly well through his intensive contact with Jindřich Štreit during his studies at FAMU. His view of the everyday lives of ordinary people across different regions of the Czech Republic is, in most cases, empathetic and compassionate. It is no coincidence that he places at the beginning of his website a quotation by the renowned photographer Robert Frank: “The one thing that photography must contain is the humanity of the moment.”
At the center of Šperl’s interest are fundamental human values: expressions of joy and sorrow, love and friendship, loneliness and old age, the effort to preserve traditions, faith, relationships between parents and children, and the relationships of “ordinary” people to various social minorities—those in some way marginalized due to physical or mental disabilities or homelessness. In these photographs, the artist demonstrates profound empathy and an ability to gain the trust of those before his lens, photographing them from the position of an almost unnoticed observer. Within fleeting moments of everyday life, he discovers subtle, timeless metaphors and symbols, leaving their interpretation to the viewer’s active engagement. He finds them across a wide range of environments—from pubs and family celebrations to children’s games, folk festivals, and churches.
Not all the works in this exhibition depict people. We also encounter eloquent views of interiors that reveal much about their inhabitants even in their absence. Animals—and the relationship between humans and animals—are frequent motifs. It is especially in these unusual and surprising animal images that Šperl’s sense of humor becomes most apparent. Most photographs from the series Everydayness, installed at the beginning of the exhibition, were made in villages or small towns, where interpersonal relationships and traditional values remain preserved in a more crystalline form than in cosmopolitan metropolises.
Although the works from the extensive cycle Homo Pragensis were created in a markedly different environment, they share with the first part of the exhibition a desire to reveal the often uncanny, at times almost surreal moments that surround us—moments we frequently overlook because of their transience. They are also united by a refined visual presentation that draws upon contrapuntal relationships between motifs and parallel narrative threads, emphasizing subtexts open to a wide range of interpretative possibilities. Some images resemble carefully staged film stills, yet Šperl does not construct or direct his scenes. Many photographs are marked by a departure from explicit narrative and easily verbalized content, as well as by unusual compositions in which cast shadows play a significant role, often standing in for actual figures or objects. Much remains unspoken—only lightly suggested. The visual symbols and metaphors are never gratuitous; they often give form to the artist’s inner world, his experiences and emotions.
Vladimír Birgus, curator of the exhibition
Daniel Šperl was born on 12 April 1966 in Tábor. From 1982 he was a member of the photographic creative group Ekran in Tábor, with which he regularly exhibited. Between 1986 and 1990 he studied photography at the Institute of Fine Art Photography of the Union of Czech Photographers. In 1999 he completed his Master’s degree at the Department of Photography at FAMU in Prague. He completed his doctoral studies at the Institute of Creative Photography, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava in 2019, earning a Ph.D.
Šperl works primarily in black-and-white documentary photography and remains faithful to the classical negative–positive process. He has prepared more than seventy solo exhibitions and participated in over sixty group exhibitions. He has independently published several photographic books, including …Without Borders, Everyday Celebrations, Japan, Homo Pragensis, and America. He is also active as a curator and has long been engaged in processing the negative archives of lesser-known Czech photographers, such as Miloslav Kubeš (whose work is currently exhibited in the gallery café) and Robert Riedl. He works as a television and film cinematographer and lives in Prague.
Vratislav Beleni was born in 1985 in Děčín. He came to photography gradually and relatively late, around 2021. In the early stages of his work, he was drawn primarily to landscape photography, but over time he became absorbed by the life of the street. His focus increasingly shifted toward people as the central subject of his interest.
In 2024, he became an aspirant member of VERUM PHOTO, where he began to systematically develop his personal photographic approach. He currently devotes himself exclusively to documentary photography, with an emphasis on authenticity and the human dimension. In his work, he seeks out ordinary people on the outskirts of towns and villages, exploring their relationship to society and their surrounding environment. He sees the greatest strength of documentary photography in its ability to tell stories.
In a forge near Český Brod, master blacksmith Petr Brožek is forging plate armor. His work is carried out with deep respect for traditions and techniques that have been known for hundreds of years. Every hammer strike is carefully considered and cannot be taken back. The Blacksmith’s Tao presents Petr Brožek of Přehvozdí, a specialist in the creation of plate armor. Thanks to his precision and respect for traditional craftsmanship, he is a sought-after master throughout Europe. The exhibited photographs capture the process of creating parts of the armor, forged between February and June 2025.
Kevin V. Ton
For the successful Czech architect Pavel Nasadil photography is an inner joy, indeed a necessity, through which he effectively counterbalances the restrictive rules and collective nature of his profession. Photography gives him the freedom of a personal approach to the subject, the possibility of deep emotional experience, and the chance to transcend the captured reality in meaning. This significantly contributes to the exceptional impact of all his thematic projects to date, which are fundamentally focused on people and their environment, whether portraying young prisoners in West Africa, life in the controversial Donbas region, the distinctive atmosphere of London’s Soho, or others.
Delta is the result of Nasadil’s journeys to the Mississippi River Delta and its wider surroundings—places where the blues was born, influencing the style and life paths of many great musicians including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and even Elvis Presley, and where the spirit of the American South still pulses today. It is a remarkable spirit shaped by a turbulent history formed by the original Indigenous inhabitants, European settlers, and above all by the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans and their music as an expression of their lived experience.
Pavel Nasadil’s photographs capture the lives of ordinary people, the landscape, and the culture of this unique region, forming an emotionally charged visual essay, or even a poem, about a place that is more a state of mind than a mere geographical area. One is even reminded of the well-known saying of the Czech photography classic Josef Sudek when exceptional circumstances aligned for his photograph: “And the music plays…”
Daniela Mrázková, curator
I didn’t set out to document the Mississippi Delta in any formal way.
It began as a pull—quiet, persistent—toward a place I’d only heard about in music, in stories, in the undercurrents of American history.
The Delta is not just a stretch of land along a river; it’s a rhythm, a shadow, a memory carried through time. I crossed from one state to another and back again wandering through Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky, drifting from city to small town, chasing traces of stories both spoken and silent.
I met people who welcomed me into their lives—musicians, sharecroppers, pastors, farmers, the homeless, the hopeful. I photographed gospel singers wrapped in morning light, street corners heavy with silence, farmers lunching in corner stores, and landscapes that felt both forgotten and eternal. Each trip deepened my sense that I wasn’t just recording a place but tuning into its spirit.
Pavel Nasadil
Pavel Nasadil (Czech Republic, 1975) is an architect and a self-taught photographer focused on documentary practice. His work has long explored the stories of marginalized groups and individuals. In recent years, he has turned toward the diary tradition of personal documentary, developing his own approach to both individual images and cohesive narratives.
In 2018, he received the Czech Press Photo Award for his series Awaiting Trial, created in juvenile detention facilities in Sierra Leone, and in the same year was selected for the Nikon NOOR Academy Masterclass in Budapest. In 2020, he received the Maghreb Photography Award for Best Project outside the Maghreb region. In 2024, he was a finalist for the Goma Awards, and in 2025 he received the third prize of the Goma Award.
He is the founder of World Documentary Photography in Prague, a project inviting prominent documentary photographers for short-term residencies in Prague. Participants to date include Jan Grarup, Paolo Pellegrin (Magnum Photos), Pep Bonet, Viktor Kolář, and Markéta Luskačová.
Daniela Mrázková (Czech Republic, 1942) is a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy, a specialist journalist, and former editor-in-chief of the magazines Revue fotografie and Fotografie-Magazín. She is the author and co-author of 26 books on photography and photographers published in the Czech Republic and abroad and has curated more than fifty major photographic exhibitions presented in numerous countries.
She also curated the ground-breaking international exhibition What Is Photography? organized in Prague on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography. Featuring approximately 1,500 original works from collections around the world, the exhibition presented the development of photography from its invention to the present day and, for the first time, placed the work of Central and Eastern European photographers into a broader historical context.
In addition, she is the author of film and television documentaries on photography, a recipient of the Kodak Fotobuch Prize in Prague, and a member of international juries (World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year, and others). She is the founder of the Czech Press Photo competition and for twenty years organized its exhibitions.
In recent years, she has also curated notable retrospective exhibitions such as Fateful Moments of Czechoslovakia – A Visual Story of a Century and The Year 1989 – The Fall of the Iron Curtain, presenting the drama of the end of communism in the countries of Central Europe.
Hynek Tvrdý (*1972) belongs to those photographers for whom photography gradually became a way of looking around – and at times also a way of looking a little deeper into oneself.
He was introduced to photography in childhood by his father, and from then on it has accompanied him through most of his life as an important counterbalance to his profession as a programmer.
In 2020 he held his first solo exhibition at the X-Foto gallery in Prague and subsequently took part in several group exhibitions. He is currently preparing his first monographic photo book “PLACE” which he plans to self-publish in the first half of next year.
In 2025 he became an aspirant member of the Verum Photo collective.
Kevin V. Ton
Some things are so obvious and so omnipresent that we gradually stop noticing them. One of these is the fundamental importance of what we tend to call “ordinary life.” Even the expression itself—created by us—reinforces the feeling that it refers to something insignificant. After all, what could be essential, interesting, or profound about anything “ordinary”? And yet, without this everyday life, which forms the foundation of everything, there would be no great moments, no historical milestones, no turning points that determine the further course of history.
The photographs of Josef Husák, belonging to the tradition of subjective documentary, attempt to capture precisely this seemingly ordinary life—and its true extraordinariness. At first glance, some viewers might see them as “ordinary” street scenes. But they are far more than a simple documentary reflection of reality in the sense of “this is what it looked like then, and this is what we were like.” Something deeper lies behind them: the effort to reach the essence, to look beyond the visible. “I’ve always been drawn more to what is behind the scenes, behind the main action. From a photographic perspective, that is usually more interesting,” Husák says.
The author often works with subtle humour, visually surprising moments, and unusual contrasts—both between situations and between the objects and protagonists in the images. His photographs frequently feature multi-layered compositions: a single frame contains several seemingly unrelated events.
This is the author’s deliberate game with the viewer. We usually expect—and are conditioned to believe—that objects or people within the same frame must have a direct relation to one another. Otherwise, why would they appear together? But what if this assumption does not fully apply? The mind begins to search for relationships even where none are apparent, imagination is triggered, and viewers project their own interpretations into the image, creating new stories. “I aim for that—I’m glad when a photograph makes the viewer read into it,” says Josef Husák, who has the gift of noticing and capturing such moments.
Most of the photographs presented in this exhibition were taken between 1984 and 2025 on the streets of Prague, though a few also come from Paris, London, and Berlin. From the very beginning, Husák was drawn to the city and its visual poetry. “I am a native of Prague—born and raised on the Vltava river,” he explains, adding that the city and the street are his natural environment. “Of course, I like nature, but I feel more like a visitor there,” he says.
This is also why, as a member of the Vinohrady photo club, he was not attracted to landscape, still life, or nudes—but to documentary photography. It is therefore no surprise that in 1983 he was among the founding members of the photographic group City (Město), named by another lover of the city and its people, photographer František Dostál.
Many of the photographs from Husák’s personal work were taken during the years when he was already a professional corporate photographer, specialising in architecture, documentary, and reportage. He worked in this role for thirty years, yet he was always drawn back to the streets: after photographing for work, he would still photograph for himself.
“It’s my way of relaxing; it gives me fulfilment and a sense that I might not be entirely useless. And perhaps I’m creating something that could resonate with someone,” he says.
Tomáš Vocelka, journalist and photographer
