Selection of color slides and photographs of the established Czech photographer Karel Cudlín depict the story of the departure of troops of Soviet Army from Milovice and other military bases. The exhibition is organized on the occassion of the 20 years anniversary of this event of the recent history of Czechoslovakia.
June 19th 1991 the local railway station in Milovice left the last train direction Moscow and with it the one of the last from the 70 000 soldiers and 30 000 civilians located here. The slides and photographs of Karel Cudlin's personal archive reflect in unusual perspective this story. Cudlín pointed his camera (besides scenes from the transport of soldiers and heavy military technology) as well on the traces of artistic creations, left on the facades and in interiors of the buildings and public spaces. The untutored folk art poetics of artbrut - strange sort of military graffiti, wall paintings, and sculptural objects from the barracks of the "soviet zone" shed light on the cultural and political contexts of the 20 years of the occupation seeing from today's point of view. The selection of the slides is extended with the short videodocument made by Vojtěch Hönig together with Cudlín earlier this year in the location of Milovice.
Fragment of video documentary made by Vojta Dukát from the same location is as well part of the installation.
Karel Cudlín (born 1960 in Prague) is at the forefront of contemporary Czech photography. Graduating in 1987 from the Department of Photography at the Prague film school, FAMU, he has worked as a photojournalist for a number of magazines and newspapers (Mladý svět, Lidové noviny, Prostor) and for a short time for the Czech Press Agency. He is best known to the Czech public as one of President Václav Havel’s personal photographers as well as for his inimitably expressive photographs of various ethnic and social groups: Czech and Slovak Romani; Ukrainian laborers and Red Army soldiers leaving the former Czechoslovakia. The slides will be presented for the public for the first time at this exhibition.
Vojtěch Hönig worked as a project manager of different NGO's in Eastern Europe and Southern Caucasus. In Weekly Respekt is he now the editor of video reportage from the Czech Republic and abroad.
The exhibition prepared in collaboration with Tydenik Respekt
