Fotograf Gallery
Fotograf Gallery was founded at the end of the year 2009 and became the second platform of the association Fotograf 07 o. s. which publishes the international magazine on art photography Fotograf (a third platform originated later in the form of the annual festival Fotograf Festival).
The Fotograf Gallery helps to continually stimulate activities in the field of art photography and reflect its contexts and media overlaps into contemporary art. When the gallery was founded it was meant to become a space connected with the contents of individual issues of the magazine, however, shortly after it became an autonomous exhibition space systematically run by its curator. The Fotograf Gallery focuses on the role of a phogographer in the post-media situation of contemporary art, mainly on the broader field of photographic thinking which does not necessarily need to materialize in the form of a photographic artefact but as a way of looking at and understanding reality, or possibly as the basis of conceptual and contextual operations in which a photograph is seen as a specific visual bearer of information.
The exhibition programme of the gallery features mainly exhibitions of Czech photographers of the young generation and the younger members of the middle generation. However, every year there is slso at least one exhibition of an artist of the older generation or a thematical exhbition. Since 2011 one of the gallery´s three rooms has been used for smaller so-called chamber exhibitions. This space is also used for lectures and workshops.
In 2011 and 2012 the curator of the Fotograf Gallery was Edith Jeřábková and in the middle of the year 2012 Jiří Ptáček took over. The curator of the gallery is responsible for the conception and realization of most exhibitions and the selection of other external curators.
The Fotograf Gallery is located in Školská street in Prague 1 together with two other cultural venues of similar interests – Communication Space Školská 28 and the office and bookshop ArtMap. In the same building there is another photographic gallery called Leica.
The Fotograf Gallery is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Prague Municipal Council. An additional source of financing of the gallery and magazine are portfolia for PPF Art reflecting topics of individual issues of the magazine Fotograf and based on the gifts of photographic collections of various photographers.
Jiří Ptáček
- The Photographer Gallery was founded in 2009,00:00:03.250
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- as a secondary activity of the civic society Photographer 07.00:00:07.199
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- Photographer 07 has been publishing the magazine Photographer,00:00:14.105
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- in both Czech and English language.00:00:18.042
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- The main personality of the gallery and the magazine is Pavel Baňka,00:00:22.866
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- who initiates the projects, he initiated the gallery and magazine foundation00:00:30.161
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- and the festival Photograph as well.00:00:35.411
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- The gallery has a specific attitude of00:00:38.145
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- going around the photograph. It isn't any direct medium observation,00:00:42.818
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- there are always some possibilities to exceed not only to other media,00:00:52.603
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- but also to contemplate the art photograph and stepping it over to a non-art one.00:00:59.721
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- And this thinking is the most important00:01:10.246
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- for me as well when considering the photograph medium.00:01:14.208
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- For me, the photograph medium starts with a primitive picture treatment00:01:20.043
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- we are all familiar with due to creating albums or just taking pictures00:01:29.552
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- and sharing them on social networks,00:01:37.218
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- over sophisticated approaches that are self-referent00:01:41.827
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- or refer to the photograph medium and its technological background or base...00:01:47.126
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- I'd like to move in that broad range00:01:56.007
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- as I suppose the photograph medium needs to expand all the time,00:01:59.986
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- so this extensive net is something we can offer differently from other galleries.00:02:07.332
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- But our gallery doesn't try to delimit nowise,00:02:20.423
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- it just creates some process around the boundary zones.00:02:24.837
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- The zones protect us from conventional hanging pictures on the wall.00:02:31.490
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- Every exhibition takes the attention away to another issue...00:02:44.609
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- The branches I'm standing among00:02:50.250
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- is an exhibition referring to a photograph that was in the background00:02:52.773
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- of Vít Soukup's painting work.00:03:00.272
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- Vít Soukup worked with photographs but never exhibited them,00:03:03.294
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- so the exhibition is about Vít Soukup and not of Vít Soukup...00:03:10.152
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- Before that I realized a couple of exhibitions that made me really happy00:03:16.055
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- I worked with Kateřina Držková for the first time...00:03:23.292
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- Until recently she used comparative methods to compare found photographs00:03:25.865
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- but for this exhibition she prepared an associative set of pictures00:03:36.932
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- that looked arranged but were just found in fact.00:03:47.077
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- It was utterly intuitive or impressive collection of photographs00:03:51.625
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- that created interesting patterns, little compositions that could be interpreted in many ways.00:03:59.034
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- But the exhibition wasn't compacted by any firm concept...00:04:11.883
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- Then I repeated the exhibition of Vilém Novák,00:04:18.090
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- which I liked so much last year in Brno,00:04:21.547
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- so I wanted to show it to others too.00:04:24.176
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- I think there's no need to be shy to take over the work of somebody else...00:04:28.467
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- The exhibition was originally prepared by the curator Martin Mazanec00:04:36.501
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- and in the small environment we are, it's crucial to repeat some exhibitions.00:04:40.486
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- Particularly when the author works in spurts or unsystematically00:04:46.004
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- and that's the case of Vilém Novák who reaches very interesting results yet.00:04:53.541
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- The exhibition that was here in the middle of winter may demonstrate00:04:59.018
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- how far we can get here in the gallery from a classic reflection on photography.00:05:09.022
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- It was an exhibition of three authors and there was a treacherous moment00:05:16.815
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- as they were two pervading exhibitions with the same name.00:05:25.206
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- The first one was prepared by Alexey Klyuykov and Vasil Artamonov00:05:30.140
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- and the second one by Ladislava Gažiová.00:05:35.044
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- They agreed on the exhibitions' interdigitation00:05:38.174
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- and although we kept the distinction in outline - two exhibitions with the same name,00:05:43.270
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- the viewers entered into one complex00:05:49.588
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- where Ladislava Gažiová exhibited photograms dealing with desert theme00:05:54.987
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- in abstract and almost unclear shades of grey,00:06:05.770
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- whereas the boys created an installation that had nothing to do with photography00:06:16.417
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- and the installation referred to something that wasn't in the gallery at all,00:06:22.894
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- as it took place outside.00:06:29.176
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- Although the exhibition receded not only from photography but also from the gallery,00:06:31.477
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- the work of Ladislava and the installations of Alexey and Vasil00:06:39.531
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- pointed out feelings of emptiness and absence,00:06:46.445
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- that might be metaphorically uttered as a desert,00:06:52.917
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- but it's rather the absence or a horizon with something appearing,00:06:57.176
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- but it isn't actually clear.00:07:07.405
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- Sometimes the idea of photography may be projected into a material object00:07:11.614
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- as next year there will be an exhibition00:07:18.930
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- dealing for the first time with classic sculpture...00:07:21.057
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- or it can become a sheet of paper00:07:26.726
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- or just a general metaphor,00:07:29.665
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- reflection, impression depiction,00:07:35.529
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- memory, oblivion...00:07:40.138
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- I'm rather interested in this when reflecting on photography00:07:45.605
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- than for example its history or canonized values.00:07:53.230