'Czech It' looks at family of photographers

Kurt Shaw

Apr. 23, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- For more than 40 years, the battle between totalitarianism and artistic expression was fought behind the Iron Curtain in the former Czechoslovakia, but instead of repression smothering creativity, it encouraged it. Czech photographers pursued their passions in all directions, from pictorialism and surrealism and other forms of avant-garde photography, to classical realism and documentary photography.

"Czech It," an exhibit of works by 11 Czech photographers on display at SPACE, Downtown, offers a small window into the working methods of three generations of photographers who each respond to distinct social and political times of the Czech Republic, a country impacted by war, communism and revolution.

The exhibit was co-organized by Jen Saffron, a Pittsburgh photographer and independent curator, and Eva Heyd, the director of the Prague House of Photography. Saffron has wanted to organize the exhibit since 1995, when she attended a workshop under the tutelage of Jundrich Streit at the Prague House of Photography.

Hailing from the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, Streit recorded the decades before the Velvet Revolution, documenting the everyday trials of rural villagers struggling under an oppressive regime. Following the presentation of his documentation of village poverty, he experienced government censure in the forced closing of his photographic exhibit and the grammar school where he served as headmaster.

Ten of his photographs are on display here, and each depicts village life in the 1980s that, even then, were a throwback in time.

"What's shocking is to realize that these prints were made in the 1980s, but these people look like they were living in the 1940s," Saffron says of the photographs that feature men, women and children in traditional dress. All black-and-white images, they nevertheless are filled with colorful characters, nearly all of whom are smiling.

The beauty of his work is revealed in his subjects' dignity and humor while they struggle to uphold traditional values, yet underneath they battle harsh poverty, moral devastation and an oppressive regime.

Streit's work might look as though it dates to the first half of the 20th century, but the work of Jaromir Funke and Eugen Wiskovsky actually does. Both recognized as being avant-garde masters, Funke and Wiskovsky are rarely exhibited in the United States. As visitors will see, their pre-war abstracts speak to the design ideals of Germany's Bauhaus, yet were clearly influenced by constructivism, new pragmatism and abstraction.

Their photos appealed to viewers by approaching common objects in an uncommon way, experimenting with photography as a space in which to consider and depict shape, flatness, structure, texture, geometry and visual rhythm.

For example, Funke's "Two Oranges" (circa 1935) is a formal still life that utilizes fruit and panes of glass to create a constructivist composition that considers shape, contrasting flatness, texture and visual rhythm, while Wiskovsky's "Functionalist Architecture" (also circa 1935) addresses structure and geometry in the form of a slanted view of a pre-war apartment building.

Wiskovsky's later work from the '40s and early '50s, when the general sentiment dramatically changed as a result of World War II, shifted to include more symbolic, metaphoric, and meditative elements, such as his photograph entitled "Old Jewish Cemetery," from 1953. Here the crumbled remains of broken cemetery markers make poignant commentary.

Similar to Streit, Dana Kyndrova, with a critical and ironic eye, documented political events such as communist festivities, and also everyday life. While she began her photography as a young girl (her mother also was a photographer), Kyndrova's later projects also included a record of the departure of Soviet troops from the country, and life in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia (part of Czechoslovakia before the war).

Her largest body of work, culled over several decades, is titled "Woman between Inhaling and Exhaling." Many of the "Woman" photographs portray women in all possible life situations, offering a slightly ambivalent quality of a unique moment, journalistic expose and a deep understanding with a touch of humor.

Also with a focus on humor and feminism, Kristyna Milde's work, in which she replaces female figures in scenes from famous paintings with Mattel's Barbie, is a real showstopper.

Staged in scenes from paintings of Old Masters like Titian and Peter Paul Rubens, they reflect a transformation of cultural values and role models. For example, with her piece "Diana and Actaeon," she recreates a painting by Giuseppe Cesari (Italian Mannerist Painter, 1568-1640) in which similarities between stereotypical representations from the past and present collide to make an impact on the stereotypes of female identities, both as victims and savior.

Milde is just one of five emerging artists represented in this exhibit whose work represents an interesting peak in the contemporary Czech photographic scene. Storytelling presents itself in both real and pseudo documentary form -- as in Michal Pechoucek's "Reason for Divorce I-XIII" (1999), a photo-novel almost as a thrilling and dynamic as a movie sequence, and Katerina Drzkova's very rational consideration of visual transformation of the reality of drab, bloc architecture through new media such as photoshop.

Finally, Petra Mala's project is a reconstruction of fragments from her childhood -- a recollection of its details and places re-enacted by family members. Strongly emotionally charged, Mala's work considers relations between mother, grandmother and daughter, and explores topics of innocence, memory and identity.

The works by the remaining photographers are equally engaging, making for a tidy show that packs a lot in, especially in terms of historical context.

Kurt Shaw covers the art scene for the Tribune-Review. He can be reached via e-mail.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0288-34373650