In the course of its evolution, documentary photography in the Czech lands gained a specific, firm place and its assertiveness has led to it being generally accepted and the genre established to an unpre- cedented degree (particularly in comparison to other genres of photography), but this has also lead to the partial displacement we observe today, the separation of the artist and the breaking away from reality. This condition does not seem to be merely a problem of one generation. It is an interesting phenomenon that moves across all ages and artists' creative profiles.
Documentary photography as a medium no longer has the exclusive visual monopoly over the single, most precise record of the facts of a given situation. In many areas this function is claimed, and also much better fulfilled, by television, video and film - in short, the moving image. If documentary photography was to retain and assert its ”high value“, it was forced to innovate. It built new channels of consumption. From the pages of pictorial magazines, it moved to galleries and then to the public consciousness as something more significant, higher, and more ”mystical“ than plain television coverage. In other words, it marked off a new position and function for itself - the contentiously proclaimed ability to bring something more, something different.
The 1990s was a time of a rapid and hectic development of a newly restructured society, one composed of the same people but organized and living in absolutely new structures and a different context. This brought new, peculiar impulses, to which of course art, and the art scene responded (it had to respond!), and so did photography. In the area of contemporary art, documentary photography by virtue of its term and definition has an almost exclusive right and at the same time a duty to /mannequins in a favorable light/ rrecord and comment on the current phenomena, stories, situations and events. The fact that documentary photographers in the Czech lands did so in a specific way corresponding to the uniqueness of the local background and time period was inevitable, and naturally, there is nothing wrong with that. The fact that some artists active today keep (whether consciously or uncosciously) ”hermetically“ doing always the same things, working in a way that in the contemporary context sorely lacks originality is probably also inevitable, judging from the number and popularity of such artists (with the youngest generation relentlessly bringing them up to stregth). But there is certainly something odd about this.
We may find all kinds of differences in the work of concrete authors, but aside from some clearly visible visual signs the main and crucial defining factor is the system of thought governing the separate groups of documentary photographers. The idea of presenting something hitherto unseen, something that cannot be recorded otherwise than by documentary photography, the idea of the terribly important and almost karmically mystical role of the artist, the singular eye, is still openly worshipped, but in the existing context it is plainly absurd. It has transpired, that perhaps life is the same everywhere in the world. The same people lighting the same cigarettes, the same people watching airplanes in like places, in similar settings. Mannequins.
The artless, sensual celebration of unaffected visuality, the affirmation of reality, the celebration of the all-seeing and non-intellectual eye is a thing of the past. In the present time and situation (I beg the reader to forgive the following simplification) the aim is not to create photography of the ”seen“, but photography of the ”thought“. In the debate about the current state of Czech documentary photography, we should discuss in(full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)
Documentary photography as a medium no longer has the exclusive visual monopoly over the single, most precise record of the facts of a given situation. In many areas this function is claimed, and also much better fulfilled, by television, video and film - in short, the moving image. If documentary photography was to retain and assert its ”high value“, it was forced to innovate. It built new channels of consumption. From the pages of pictorial magazines, it moved to galleries and then to the public consciousness as something more significant, higher, and more ”mystical“ than plain television coverage. In other words, it marked off a new position and function for itself - the contentiously proclaimed ability to bring something more, something different.
The 1990s was a time of a rapid and hectic development of a newly restructured society, one composed of the same people but organized and living in absolutely new structures and a different context. This brought new, peculiar impulses, to which of course art, and the art scene responded (it had to respond!), and so did photography. In the area of contemporary art, documentary photography by virtue of its term and definition has an almost exclusive right and at the same time a duty to /mannequins in a favorable light/ rrecord and comment on the current phenomena, stories, situations and events. The fact that documentary photographers in the Czech lands did so in a specific way corresponding to the uniqueness of the local background and time period was inevitable, and naturally, there is nothing wrong with that. The fact that some artists active today keep (whether consciously or uncosciously) ”hermetically“ doing always the same things, working in a way that in the contemporary context sorely lacks originality is probably also inevitable, judging from the number and popularity of such artists (with the youngest generation relentlessly bringing them up to stregth). But there is certainly something odd about this.
We may find all kinds of differences in the work of concrete authors, but aside from some clearly visible visual signs the main and crucial defining factor is the system of thought governing the separate groups of documentary photographers. The idea of presenting something hitherto unseen, something that cannot be recorded otherwise than by documentary photography, the idea of the terribly important and almost karmically mystical role of the artist, the singular eye, is still openly worshipped, but in the existing context it is plainly absurd. It has transpired, that perhaps life is the same everywhere in the world. The same people lighting the same cigarettes, the same people watching airplanes in like places, in similar settings. Mannequins.
The artless, sensual celebration of unaffected visuality, the affirmation of reality, the celebration of the all-seeing and non-intellectual eye is a thing of the past. In the present time and situation (I beg the reader to forgive the following simplification) the aim is not to create photography of the ”seen“, but photography of the ”thought“. In the debate about the current state of Czech documentary photography, we should discuss in(full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)