Viktor Kolař – Foto Kolář

#1 min Pavel Vančát, Viktor Kolář

29. 1. 2024

#46 TourismHistoryArchive

Photographer Viktor Kolář's father set up a photography shop in Ostrava in the 1920s and worked as a photojournalist and filmmaker for local and Prague clients. The disappearance of his trade in the early 1950s only pushed him to document newly built housing estates. The authors of the monograph, Lukáš Bártl and Ondřej Kolář, believe that Kolář's work stored in the Ostrava City Archives "is the most important visual testimony of Ostrava from the 1920s to the 1950s." Indeed, the book shows continuously and convincingly the history of Ostrava from the beginnings of Czechoslovakia to the post-war building successes, defiling politicians, actors and strikers, ruins and new housing estates. History in the palm of your hand.

 

Viktor Kolař, Foto Kolář, Brno: Stará pošta Gallery and Publishing House, 2022

#46 TourismHistoryArchiveDocumentTourismUrbanismPhotoreportAuthor's review

Pavel Vančát

is a free-lance curator and writer, based in Prague. Since 2008, he has worked as project curator of StartPoint: prize for European Art Graduates. He has curated dozens of exhibitions of contemporary art, photography, and visual culture. He was the head curator of Prague’s Fotograf Festival 2019 and co-curator of m3 Sculpture Festival 2020: Layers of History.

#46 Tourism

It is interesting how much the world of photography is connected with tourism, in other words, how much the two domains may have in common. If we look at them through the lens of a mass phenomenon, they may even be similarly old. And it is in this perspective that a number of controversial questions arise in all their clarity. To what extent has tourism affected many of the coastlines and unique destinations that attract tourists? And to what extent does photography influence our perception of the places we visit?

Filip Láb – Apostle of Future Photography

#5 min Filip Láb, Pavel Vančát

Filip Láb – Apostle of Future Photography

#41 Postdigital PhotographyProfilePostdigital photography

Filip Láb, who died unexpectedly and prematurely in May 2021, was not only a prominent theorist and teacher of photography, but was also one of a generation of artists that dealt with the shift in political polarities and radical changes in the photographic paradigm. His relatively short but very significant creative period, tied to his collaboration with Bára Mrázková, still surprises with its innovation and precision.