Curoator: Lukáš Bártl

The exhibition everyday life represents a somewhat neglected group of photographs created in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s and 1960s. there are certainly a number of reasons why this group of works has remained unexamined up to now. first of all, they come from a relatively short episode “inserted” rather inconspicuously between the extreme degradation of the photographic media under the influence of socialist realism and, on the other hand, its significant rise in the 1960s. secondly, we are dealing with a period of time when a number of artists, who were more important when viewed in the global context, created their key works, often in seclusion and with no possibility of presenting them appropriately. the list would include such artists as emila Medková, vilém reichmann, the documentary photographer Josef koudelka, and the greatest Czech photographer, Josef sudek. it is these artists who have received the most attention when this period is examined. However, this does not alter the fact that local photography at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s was dominated by pictures with a completely different feeling, which, thanks to their mass distribution in periodicals and books, appealed to a much wider audience than the works of the aforementioned giants of Czech photography. they were later referred to as the “photography of everyday life” or the “poetry of everyday life in photography”. taken mostly in all kinds of street corners of Czech cities and towns, the wider public adored these pictures which provided an alternative to the ideologically-driven photographs of socialist realism from the early 1950s. the exhibition presents the work of eighteen of the most important photographers of everyday life, such as Boris Baromykin, Miloš Budík, Bohuslav Burian, Pavel Dias, erich einhorn, Jan Hajn, karel otto Hrubý, Jiří Jeníček, václav Jírů, rupert kytka, ivo Přeček and Marie Šechtlová. it also shows how the photographs were presented in periodicals and books of the time which the photography of everyday life changed significantly, and introduces the phenomenon of so-called international photography salons, which many of these photographers relied on to a strong degree. thus the exhibition offers a unique view of a time which “lived for the everyday and for photography”. an eponymous publication by the publishing house arbor vitae is being presented together with the exhibition.

Art Gallery in Cheb