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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
