Photographers-travellers Karel Cudlín and Vojta Dukát undergone the journey to Transcarpatian during last 20 years 30 times. You are welcomed to attend the screening of the images from their huge archive and to join the discussion about the contemporary documentary photography.
Karel Cudlín (born 28 June 1960) is a Czech photographer.
Cudlín was born in Prague and started taking photographs in his teens. Borrowing his father's Exakta and supported by his uncle, a photography enthusiast, Cudlín soon started photographing the Gypsies of Žižkov, the suburb where he lived. Cudlín attended a social work school that, combined with a short stint in a low-grade job, provided him with the proletarian credentials needed to join the Fotografia cooperative. The cooperative sent him to a ballroom in the Lucerna area where he overcame considerable technical difficulties in photographing young people at night. A third area that he explored was Communist Party rituals.
After a year at Lidová škola umění, Cudlín was in 1983 admitted to FAMU, very free by Czechoslovakian standards of the time. He graduated in 1987, and soon found work at the weekly Mladý svĕt. With the democratization of Czechoslovakia, he embarked on a series of relationships with other Czechoslovakian media sources, among them the newspapers Prostor and Lidové noviny and the ČTA agency. After ČTA closed in 1996, Cudlín became a freelance photographer.
Cudlín's new themes included refugees, Israel, the lingering Soviet forces within Czechoslovakia, Valdice prison, and, by accident, Ukraine. He has continued with a small number of long-term projects (Ukrainian workers in Prague, hypermarkets), photographed in black and white.
Born on 28 June 1960, Prague – Czech Republic
works in collection:
Prague Museum of Applied Arts
Prague City Museum
Moravian Gallery Brno
Ludwig Museum Cologne
Wall Museum Berlin
Victoria and Albert Museum London
Museum de Ellysse Lauseanne
Numerous photographs in private collections in Europe and overseas
Solo exhibitions (selection):
Prague:
Foma Gallery 1988
Prague House of Photography 1991, 1995
Franz Kafka Gallery 1998
Prague Castle 2001
Jewish Museum Prague 2004
France: Cognac, La Rochelle1991
Israel: Jerusalem, Nora Gallery 1996
Austria: Wiena 1995
Belorussia: Minsk 2001
Germany: Berlin 1991, Cologne 1990
Spain: Barcelona 2000, 2002
Azerbaijan: Baku 2002
Slovakia: Bratislava 2002, Kosice 2003
Ukraine: Kiev 2003
USA: NYC, Leica Gallery 2003, Worcerster, Clark University 2004
Chorvatia: Zagreb, Badrov Gallery 2004
Rumania: Buchurest 2005
Moldavia: Chisinau 2005
Participation in more than 45 group exhibitions in about 60 cities both in Europe and US
Books:
1994 Publisher: Torst, Prague
1998 Publisher: Argo, Prague
2001 Publisher: Torst, Prague
16 prizes in Czech Press Photo – since 1996
Vojta Dukát
As a photographer and filmmaker Vojta Dukát (1947) has developed a body of work which is both unique and outside any trends or fashions. This has to do with his choice of subjects: everyday life on locations where the Western way of life has not yet penetrated: a village in Portugal, the Ukraine or his native country of Czechoslovakia. His photographs and films usually are in black and white and radiate an intimate and romantic atmosphere.
Vojta Dukát was born in Brno, Moravia, but has lived in The Netherlands since the late sixties. After his studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Filmacademie in Amsterdam he started to travel and opted for a life of freedom as opposed to the deadline and discipline commonly associated with the life of a photographer. Dukát is not interested in politically-charged or sensational images. He prefers to observe the daily routines of ordinary people in their own surroundings. 'I very much celebrate the visual aspects of life'.
In 1997 Dukát received the Capi-Lux Alblas Prijs, 'which is presented to a photographer or creator of images from The Netherlands or one who lives and works there, whose contribution to the field of photography or electronic imagery in the broadest sense of the word, is highly individual and/or of social importance to the medium itself, and whose vision is or has been a major influence on his colleagues and on emerging photographers and image makers.' The award was accompanied by a presentation of his work in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
