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Background information
"The poetic as well as radical photos of Jindřich ŠTREIT created a universal image of man. Today they are among the great classics of humanistic photography." (© Thomas Hoepker)
Content
"Jindřich ŠTREIT is an extraordinary chronicler and narrator. For more than five decades he describes life in the countryside in the Czech regions of Northern Moravia and Bohemia in his black and white photographs. It is a comprehensive photographic as well as sociological study, similar in scope and artistic quality, like that of August SANDER in Germany or Eugene ATGET in Paris. In its own style and visual language, just grown in secret, at the extreme end of the world at that time. In reality, Sovinec is pretty much in the middle of Europe The region is shaped by the turmoil and damage of the world wars and a subsequent dictatorship, whose rituals and imagery in the everyday world of that time often seem absurd to us today. Jindřich ŠTREIT describes the isolation and isolation of people in the everyday life of the socialist collective At private parties as well as at joint festivals and encounters, the photo afien the joy of life, a strong community and solidarity. This becomes all the clearer when compared with the recordings of the official rallies and celebrations of the state. The contrast between the pictures of Streit and the official ideological representations could not be more serious. The criticism of the existing living conditions was always present in the pictures and could not be understood by a totalitarian state in its frozen vocabulary and sign language other than a criticism. From the 1980s onwards, this led to a ban on publication in any form, arrests and constant controls by the state. So he remained an unknown in photographic history, despite constant photography until the end of socialism. Since the 1990s, after his rehabilitation, his pictures have been shown worldwide and are represented in the most important photographic collections. In his home country he is one of the most famous photographers as well as a valued teacher at the leading universities in the Czech Republic." (freely translated publisher's note, © Buchkunst, 2020)