exhibition at café

Us, at the end of eternity

14. 1. 2025 - 3. 3. 2025

By the end of the eighties, citizens in Czechoslovakia were experiencing dark, stagnant times caused by peak normalization. Many dreamed of when the era of unfreedom would end along with the communist regime, which partnered with ‘the Soviet Union, for all times and nothing else’ closing the country and its citizens behindthe iron curtain. Then, only a few expected an early change caused by the events following in November of 1989.

Even during the dark ‘infinite times’ of normalization, normal life for the citizens resumed. They remained simple, with ordinary joy and worries. It was during this era, around the mid-eighties, that Tomáš Vocelka started photographing the life surrounding him. He was inspired by his father, Vladimír, and by a well- recognized and significant Czech photographer Gustav Aulehla (1931-2021), whom he encountered in a Silesian town, Krnov.

Vocelka’s photographs from the eighties mirror the viewpoint of a twenty-year-old student of ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague), who observes inquisitively and sometimes with fascination the people surrounding him and their lives. „I was amazed how the images Gustav Aulehla took could retell stories. However, I found them quite sad. Then, I saw the world differently (despite all the distress associated with the peak of normalization, which I of course felt). Almost everything in my vicinity was playful, mysterious, and full of magic. After all, I was around twenty. Today, when my age is nearing sixty, I completely understand Aulehla’s point of view…, “states Vocelka.

The author formerly photographed similarly to Aulehla who formed his art based on an inner need, without the core ambition being centered on exhibiting or presenting the work. He focuses on a human subjects and their existence in his previous work rather than shifting his perspective toward the former totalitarian regime. Still, the theme inherently persisted in certain photographs, such as the image of Soviet occupation soldiers in front of the Prague astronomical clock or the view of the feared black soviet car Volga and the military patrol stationed at Republic Square.
The images in the Leica Gallery café emerged between 1985-1988 and are the first showcase from Vocelka’s book „Then, at the End of Eternity “. The author, in collaboration with the platform Leica+, is preparing more images and a seminar on Tuesday 11th of February at 17:30 in Leica Gallery. Apart from the photographs from the eighties, further highlights of the present work of the author will be displayed.

(CV) Tomáš Vocelka (*1965) is a journalist and a photographer originally from Krnov. He started taking photographs when he studied at a high school in Krnov. Vocelka began his journalist career at the beginning of the nineties at the weekly news journal Region, operating in the south of Moravia and Silesia. Initially, he started as a photographer but later additionally focused on writing. In 2000, he moved to Prague and worked in various positions in the central editorial office of MF DNES. He has been chief editor of said journal for more than ten years. From 2016 to the beginning of 2025, he worked in the editorial office of Aktuálně.cz.

He is a winner of the national photography competition Sony World Photography Awards in the category Architecture | Professional (2021) and the grantee from Czech Press Photo 2019. His images were published in many local and global media (for ex. the title page of a Spanish journal National Geographic Viajes).