Fotograf Magazine

In the photographs Petra Pětiletá staged together with Jana Doubková, one or the other are found standing next to a table at a reception. They are alone in halls devoid of people. In one picture, the waiters are unpacking drinking glasses. Have they arrived at the wrong time, either too early or too late? What are they waiting for?

Petra Pětiletá is concerned with staging situations related to our desires, secret dreams and romantic emotions. Using either video or still cameras, she approaches the world of illusions that we spin around us as our most personalized “survival strategies”. Among the merits of her realizations is that the degree of her own detachment or involvement in her chosen themes is never entirely clear. The predominance of feminine elements in her work can be seen as an indicator of an immediate unity with her theme only to the extent to which woman is understood by our culture as the subject of still greater emotional intensity. But even here, Pětiletá is by no means rigid, often including men also as will become evident.