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.