About

My "Life with Photography" began in 1969. Firstly with family pictures and in the 1970s I began focusing on photographing my beloved native region of Šumava. At that time I graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts for the Union of Czech Photographers and my work focuses on Šumava nature and her photographic black and white portrait. I consider wandering through the Šumava landscape and experiences in my work in its amazing nature a great life happiness. I have exhibited my cycles of black-and-white photographs in our country as well as abroad. I work exclusively with analogue cameras. I have recently photographed and also exhibited black and white images of the nature in the Bavarian Forest and Pošumaví landscape. I prefer a black-and-white photographic illustration primarily for its graphic features and also because it deprives the image of the most well-known facts. This brings the possibility for deeper thinking regarding the image and it’s possible to discover the unseen and the mysterious contained in the motif.

However, for commercial reasons, over a short period of time I also photographed and published the landscape in colour. The colour images were also tailor-made for customers.

I love "handmade" photography and from the very beginning, i.e. since the 1970s, I have been processing black and white photographic materials myself, negative and positive and formats of all sizes. The experience of almost 45 years of work in the darkroom is useful preparation for the wet collodion process that I have recently used to view the current landscape. This process, which is more than 165-year-old captivates me with the unique and nowadays’ unseen presentation of light and therefore, also captivates me with its special or even mysterious view of the photographed subject. I believe that even nowadays it can be used successfully for artfully landscaped photography. The wet collodion process is perhaps the most difficult alternative for a landscape photographer because of the need for immediate processing of the plates at the site of the photography. But I love doing it and I admire the work of prominent photographers from the second half of 19th century, when they photographed with this method. The landscapers from that time gain great respect and admiration from me and I feel lucky to be able to enjoy at least part of the feelings they had during their pioneering landscape photography when working with the collodion process.

For my work I use a 19th-century historical wooden camera and a wooden panoramic camera of my own production as well as a contemporary camera for a large format negatives.


Separate exhibitions

  • Mariánské Lázně (1981)
  • Tachov (1983)
  • Sušice (1983)
  • Cheb (1983)
  • Kašperské Hory (1984, 2012)
  • Plzeň (1984, 2005)
  • Klatovy (1985, 1997, 2006, 2013)
  • Hof (1990)
  • Weiden (1994, 2013)
  • Prachatice (1998)
  • Poledník (2000)
  • Železná Ruda — Alžbětín (2001)
  • Dobrá Voda — Hartmanice (2003)
  • Schwandorf (2004)
  • Schensee (2004)
  • Viechtach (2004)
  • Neukirchen b.Heiligen Blut (2006)
  • Ludwigsthal (2013)
  • Neunburg vorm Wald (2013)
  • Kdyně (2015)
  • Kvilda (2018)