Every year, at the end of June, the Swiss city of Basel comes alive culturally. In addition to the prestigious art fair, Art Basel, the city also hosts one of the most significant events focused on contemporary photography: the international art fair photo basel…
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Even if the consensual border of how we separate truthfulness from fiction ever existed, in today’s media world, it has become so ambiguous there is no longer any point in even asking about it…
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In its now classic offering of screensavers, Windows 98 offered the growing 3-D pipeline, also known as the Plumber’s Nightmare. The pipe appeared in a black void and gradually filled the entire monitor…
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In many cultural institutions, the unpredictable progress of the Covid-19 pandemic has kindled a digital revolution, but in most cases this has not transcended the concept of pre-pandemic exhibition programming…
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The Czech and Slovak reader will surely forgive us if, at the opening of this review of the exhibition titled Skɪz(ə)m, we briefly introduce the hosting institution…
One of the most important European events for the field of independent publishing is Miss Read / The Berlin Art Book Festival, held in May at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. This year, more than three hundred editors, publishers, and artists, representing both well-established names and entirely independent DIY projects got together for a period of three days…
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At the start of June 1901, Count Karel Chotek ordered his servants to pack
for a trip for him and his entire family. He and his wife, Adelaide, had been
planning an excursion to Holland for quite a while – the Count had already
previously visited Noordwijk aan Zee during his European travels…
The 10th anniversary exhibition of independent publishers, which took place
during the first weekend of May, was installed in the heart of Berlin, in the
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, for the second time…
Manifesta seems to have got a second wind. The last editions (in
St. Petersburg and Zurich) of this almost 25-year-old travelling biennial
tried (in a slightly forced way) to redefine its original mission – to create
a new unified identity, establish a network of renewed cultural exchanges,
and help Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall…
Last November, the 21st edition of Paris Photo – the world’s largest
photography trade fair – attracted a record number of more than 64,000
visitors. This is a much higher attendance rate than in the case of its main
competitors: the Photography Show, organised in New York by the Association
of International Photography Dealers (AIPAD), and the new Photo London
trade fair, which first took place in 2015 after several unsuccessful attempts to
organise a major world photo fair in the British metropolis…
This year’s fourteenth edition of documenta took place in two very different geopolitical areas –in Kassel, Germany, as usual, but also in Athens. The Greek capital, however, was not a mere satellite, as was the case with Kabul and Alexandria in the last edition, but a full-bodied equal half of the event…
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Over its ten years of existence, the British magazine, Photographies (published by Taylor & Francis), has established itself as among the most important periodicals focused on contemporary photography theory and criticism…
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Jan Malý, a Praguer by birth and in death (16. 4. 1954 – 5. 4. 2017), departed this life as the last of a trio of friends who in 1980 revived the once popular photographic genre, the portrait of the whole body…
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On 2 July, Adam Holý died suddenly at the age of 41. Adam was known primarily as an unconventional fashion and lifestyle photographer capable of drawing celebrities into his specifc way of seeing and working…
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Paris Photo ceased being just a commercial trade fair a long time ago. It has continuously been expanding its program to dedicate more space to curated exhibitions, symposia, lectures, photo book displays, and hundreds of autograph sessions with leading photographers…
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The book launch for the final volume of The History of European Photography 1900–2000 took place in November 2016 at the Albertina in Vienna with dozens of historians, curators and photographers from many countries participating…
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Francois Hébel, head of administration of the Magnum agency, once again took up the post of artistic director of the oldest photography festival in the world in Arles in the south of France. He returned to the post after a long interval, during which several more or less successful successors alternated in the position…
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The main themes of this year’s 4th International Month of Photography – Photo Biennale 2002 in Moscow were ‘the body and motion’, ‘children and childhood’ and ‘landscape’. Landscape photography was presented mainly in a number of exhibitions in the Circus, near the Kremlin, and in a large exposition in the New Circus…
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Fred Baldwin and his wife Wendy Watriss, the founders and directors of the Houston FotoFest, the first and still the largest photography festival on the American continent, never tried to attract vast numbers of visitors by including exhibitions of the most popular stars of the photography heaven…
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War is like an aging actress, ever more dangerous and ever less photogenic – the bitter words of Robert Capa (1913-1954), the renowned war photographer and founding member of the legendary photo agency Magnum…
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When a bunch of enthusiasts headed by the agile Václav Macek organized the first Month of Photography in Bratislava thirteen years ago, the event had little competition in the entire post-Soviet bloc…
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If we can find hardly any references to Czech photography in all older histories of photography, ranging from Beaumont Newhall’s, Gernsheim’s or Peter Pollack’s, in newer encyclopedias and histories considerably more attention is paid to Czech photographers…
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The seventh Paris Photo, which took place last November in the elegant exhibition rooms located directly underneath the Louvre, has confirmed its status as the largest fair in the field of art photography through the sheer number of its 104 exhibitors and more than 42,000 visitors…
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This year the 45th edition of the photography festival in Arles, traditionally held throughout most of the summer, garnered a great deal of attention even before it started. This year would be the final one with François Hébel at its head…
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Although London – with its large number of photo galleries; regular photography auctions at well-known auction houses such as Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bloomsbury; excellent photo collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Gallery; several publishers specialising in photography; and numerous photo agencies – is a leading centre of world photography, until recently it did not have a large photography fair that could compete with events in New York, Paris, San Francisco or Los Angeles…
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Although the Moscow Photobiennale has taken place this spring only for the fifth time, and therefore has not by any stretch attained the kind of long tradition like the Recontres d’Arles, the Month of Photography in Paris, the spring photography festival in Barcelona, or the Photofest in Houston, it is already evident that it has become one of the most significant photography festivals worldwide, one that in many ways – such as in the number of extraordinary exhibitions and the enormous public and media interest, as well as the illustrious openings and social events – outdoes some of its more established rivals…
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No less than 35 years have elapsed since 1969, when the photographer Lucien Clergue, together with his friends Jean Maurice Roquette and Michel Tournier, founded the first photography festival in the world in the small Provencal city of Arles, an event inspired by the theater festival in nearby Avignon…
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The tenth anniversary year of Fotofest Houston was carried out in the spirit of its supporting theme – Celebrating Water. The most prominent photography festival in North America took place for the tenth time this year…
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Last November Paris again became the centre of the world of photography, at the same time hosting both the Month of Photography and the Paris Photo fair. While the fair – thanks to the number of participating galleries and visitors, its accompanying events, excellent promotion and above all the diversity and quality of the presented photos – surpassed its main competitor, New York’s AIPAD, the circum- stances surrounding the Month of Photography once again reflected this festival’s gradual decline from fame as the most important photography festival in the world…
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Even though the program of this year’s Bratislava festival did not feature any mega-exhibitions like the large Slovak Photography, 1925-2000 or any retrospective like those of Salgado, Klein, Leibovitz, Witkin, Cartier-Bresson and Martinček in past years, the organisers, led by Václav Macek, were again able to put together an attractive exhibition programme last November, even if a little uneven in quality…
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Łodź, Poland’s second largest city, is full of contrasts. On the one hand there is the sadness of empty textile factories that were unable to compete with cheap Asian products, the city’s confused urban design without a distinct city centre, its high level of unemployment, Potemkin houses whose facades hide courtyards as dirty as any in St…
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The main event of the fifteenth annual Month of Photography in Bratislava took place right at the festival’s beginning in early November. This was the ceremonial opening of the Central European House of Photography in the historic building in Prepoštská street which for many years has been the home of the Profil photography gallery and the festival’s main organiser, FOTOFO…
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It seems that the oldest festival of photography in the world, the in the South of France, has finally emerged from the crisis in which it found itself in the late 1990s. This was to a decisive degree due to the work of the energetic Francois Hébel, who undertook the management of the festival four years ago and has gradaually succeeded in recovering its prestige, winning new sponsors, introducing English as the second offi- cial language alongside with French, and creating a system of awarding well-regarded prizes in several categories…
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In mid-April 2015, the AIPAD Photography Show in New York observed what is already its 35th edition. For years it has represented the most important among the art photography shows, although the younger Paris Photo has since overtaken New York in terms of the number of visitors (drawing nearly 60,000 last year, compared to 12,000 in New York), number of exhibitors (143 galleries and 26 publishing houses and bookshops in Paris as opposed to 89 exhibitors in New York), as well as the opulence of its venue – even the former army arsenal on Park Avenue, time-honoured setting of AIPAD, cannot rival the majestic palace on the Champs-Elysées…
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The New Philosophy of Photography, Friday 13th – Saturday 14th February 2015, Senate House, London (A Collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum and the Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts at the University of Warwick)…
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The obituary of Jan Lukas (b. August 10, 1915 České Budějovice – August 28, 2006 New York) appeared in Fotograf #7 (2006). The centennial of the birth of this author of twenty-five photographic albums (not to mention their multiple language variations, alternative editions or contributions to group projects) has now been celebrated by a trio of exhibitions…
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Last year, the terrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November forced the 19 edition of Paris Photo, the world’s largest photography fair, to close its doors halfway through. It should be noted that the two weekend days during which the art fair was closed (like all other cultural organisations in the shocked French metropolis), usually draw the greatest number of visitors…
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For 47 summers, Arles becomes a centre of photography. This year, Les Rencontres d’Arles welcomed more than 13 thousands visitors, including the president François Hollande. The official program consisted of almost four dozens exhibitions, accompanied by screenings, lectures, award ceremonies and autograph sessions as well as one hundred exhibitions from the festival Voies Off and a short festival of the publishers of photobooks…
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The eight edition of the Horizonte Zingst, a photo festival focused on the topic of the environment, was held this spring. The ten-day event took place in the beautiful surroundings of Zingst, a seaside spa town located in the northern part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany…
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The Upper Silesia: the blessed and at the same time the cursed land. Extraordinary place where in a beautiful wavy landscapes coal mine towers and steel-work chimneys suddenly appear; where streets and houses are crowded taking breath away from the city, which without any open spaces ‘between’ already becomes a different city…
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Although the 6th year of the photography festival Transphotographiques took place between May 10 and June 17 in several cities in the North of France and the South of Belgium, its main hub was in Lille, an agreeable and lively town with a sprawling historical center located about half-an hour by TGV from Brussels, and an hour from Paris…
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S výjimkou Prahy dnes mezi hlavními městy ve střední Evropě nenajdeme žádné, které by nemělo vlastní fotografický festival. Svůj Měsíc fotografie dnes už má i rakouská metropole, proslulá spíše hudbou, literaturou, divadlem a výtvarným uměním než fotografickou tvorbou…
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This past May in Poland boasted an extraordinary array of photography festivals. Even as many exhibitions from April’s Decade of Photography held at the Museum of the History of Photography remained open in Krakow (such as the Lartigue retrospective or the outstanding exhibition of authentic, stark photographs depicting life under the totalitarian Communist regime created by the reporters of the weekly ITD), on May 4, the 5th annual Month of Photography also opened here…
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The Association of International Photography Art Dealers, (AIPAD) was founded in 1979, when the market in photography was only just beginning to flourish, at a time when specialized photo-galleries began mushrooming (although the oldest European photo-gallery, the Fotochema exhibition hall in Prague, had existed since 1957), photographic events started to be held on a regular basis, museums purchased photographs for their collections more frequently, and the numbers of collectors were growing…
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Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss are photographers, curators and, above all, the founders and directors of one of the most important festivals of photography and related arts in the world. I met them for the first time on a train, along with a group of other Czech photographers, when we were traveling together to the Plovdiv photo festival in Bulgaria…
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While in 2006 the program of the world’s oldest photography festival Rencontres d’Arles focused on French photography, 2007 was dominated by the photography of China and India, also featuring an intensive commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the foundation of Magnum Photos…
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As usual, the program of the 17th Month of Photography in Bratislava included several exhibitions by world famous artists. This time around these included the photojournalists of Magnum, which celebrates its anniversary, and the French multimedia artist Georges Rousse; still, the largest part of the 35 exhibitions presented as is traditional works from Central and Eastern Europe…
Read moreMThe most important event of the 39th photographic festival Recontres d’Arles took place right at the start of the festival at the beginning of July: the world famous architect Frank Gehry presented his first projects for the extensive revitalisation of the former railway workshop in whose roughly refurbished halls many exhibitions have already been taking place…
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The most important event of the 39th photographic festival Recontres d’Arles took place right at the start of the festival at the beginning of July: the world famous architect Frank Gehry presented his first projects for the extensive revitalisation of the former railway workshop in whose roughly refurbished halls many exhibitions have already been taking place…
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The Last year Paris Photo headed in the direction of globalization. Similar to the most important modern art fair, Art Basel, which runs a successful sister fair called Art Basel Miami Beach, and since the last year Art Basel Hong Kong, the Parisian organisers decided to expand to the critical US market and in the spring they put together the first Paris Photo Los Angeles fair…
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The reason why we encountered with reactions to this year’s International Biennale of Photography and Visual Art (BIP2014) in Belgium’s Liège, called Pixels of Paradise, is mainly that, thanks the care taken by the Czech Centre in Brussels, a curatorial selection of contemporary Czech production was shown…
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The Transphotographiques Photography Festival in Lille has a different theme each year. After relationships between photography and cinematography in 2007, a year later, that is this year in May – June, the main theme was photography from Central and Eastern Europe…
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The organisers of this year’s Les Rencontres d’Arles didn’t have an easy go of it. On one hand there were big expectations for the 40th Anniversary of this, the world’s oldest, photography festival, and on the other hand the global economic crisis markedly reduced the festival’s budget…
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In comparison to other arts, photography displays a number of peculiar features. Apart being the most widely used form of reproduction, within public space as well as the private sphere, it also occupies a specific position within the province of the art world…
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A deadened landscape, as if contemplating itself, yet from which energy and pureness emanate and lead to concentration: the details of nature – grass, stones, leaves. The photography of Bohumír Prokůpek…
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During November 2008 the Month of Photography took place in three cities on the Danube. In addition to the long-running festival in Bratislava, the Month of Photography took place for the third time in Vienna (it was nice that this time both festivals were connected by some special events and a special bus service) and a Month of Photography in Budapest was newly added…
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Photography from the post-Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe enjoyed a brief moment as the highlight of attention shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when museums and galleries as well as festivals of photography from Houston to Arles competed as to who would present works from this region first and in the broadest scope…
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The exhibit and subsequent publication, Unmanaged. The Natural Forest in Photography, came about as an exemplary co-operative work between the Department of Environmental Studies at the Masaryk University Faculty of Social Sciences in Brno, the Moravian Gallery in Brno and the division of forest ecology at the Silva Tarouca Research Institute for Landscape and Ornamental Gardening…
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Today photojournalism is in very bad shape. The internet has stolen a large number of readers from traditional print periodicals. A further calamity came with newspapers and magazines distributed free-of-charge…
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The thirteenth edition of the largest photographic festival, which took place in mid-November in the traditional exhibit spaces under Paris‘ Louvre, was expected to be a barometer of trends that the photography market is experiencing during the current global economic crisis…
Read morePerhaps none of the previous years of the Łódz festival had such a strong, high- quality and compact exhibit programme like this yearʼs did. It ran throughout May in a gigantic, industrial space, a former textile factory, and in many museums, galleries and cafés in the centre of Polandʼs second-largest city…
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Polandʼs offering of spring festivals is every year truly varied. Even though this yearʼs main days of the 6th Warsaw Festival of Art Photography was impacted by the State mourning after the government plane crashed near Smolensk, two days later – one right after the other – photographic shows were launched in Lodz and Krakow…
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Since 1992 when Françoise Hébel, former director of the Magnum Agency, took over management of the ailing Les Rencontres d’Arles, the number of visitors to the oldest photography festival has risen – from nine thousand eleven years ago to last year’s eighty-four thousand…
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For sixteen years now, PHoto España has ranked among the largest and most notable photography festivals in the world. Its most unique feature is the rotation of curators every three years, which – on one side prevents the repetition of stereotypes that can occur at festivals under the same management for long periods of time – as is the case with similar festivals in Paris, Houston, Bratislava or Łódź; on the other this can sometimes cause a great unevenness in terms of overall concept, reflecting the personal priorities of various curators…
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Are We? (Sommes-nous?), a publication which offers a personal but also a global account, is the result of team thought inscribed within a politically engaged attitude towards society. Whilst the collective works and the photographers’ worldly experiences serve as a basis, Tendance Floue is now taking the questioning made in its previous publications a step further with a new point of view and new ideas…
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Photographs from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia aren’t usually the centre of attention at the largest photography fair, Paris Photo. Therefore, last year’s decision by the organisers led by Guillaume Piens to focus greater attention on Central Europe, after previous host countries like Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Scandinavia, Italy and Japan, or the Arab states including Iran, provoked great expectations among gallery owners from this part of the world…
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This summer, crowds of photographers, curators, critics and mainly ordinary people interested in photography once again travelled to southern France city of Arles to the world’s oldest photography festival…
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Those expecting that the jubilee 10th annual International Festival of Photography in Łódź would be even larger and more attractive than last year’s exceptionally successful festival must have come away a bit disappointed…
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Every other year, two large photographic events coincide for nearly a week in the French capital: the Mois de la Photo festival, and the Paris Photo fair. However, while the festival, which in the 1980s in particular had few rivals worldwide, has not seen its best years lately, Paris Photo has evolved into the most important photography market in the world…
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