Photographer’s Diary 1928-1954 immerses the reader in the distinctive vision of Josef Jindřich Šechtl (1877-1954). For this photographer, the making of compositionally balanced and technically precise images was not a sufficient objective in itself. Rather, Šechtl succeeded in using his 35mm Leica to capture the fleeting nature of private and public social events in all their particularity of time and place.

Šechtl had a keen eye for the often unnoticed and overlooked, while selecting subject matter to reflect the changing tides of historical destiny sweeping across his world. Living in the South Bohemian town of Tábor, Šechtl has been overlooked by historians due to their tendency to concentrate on practitioners from major urban areas.

Šechtl & Voseček Museum of Photography has been assembling and disseminating the photographs of the Šechtl family and those of their contemporaries over five generations, and Photographer’s Diary 1928-1954 at long last brings Josef Jindřich Šechtl’s work to the public’s attention.

An introductory essay by Josef Moucha situates Šechtl in the wider context of world photography.