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Hail the pre-revolution

In a dual photo exhibit, hints of nostalgia for grim times
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
February 6th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Some of the first Vietnamese exchange students get the once-over from wary Czechs.
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Libuše Jarcovjáková & Jiří Poláček: Them & At Night

at Langhans Galerie Praha Ends Feb. 27. Vodičkova 37, Prague 1–New Town. Open Tues.–Sun. 1–7 p.m.

The pre-revolution work of two Czech photographers, Libuše Jarcovjáková and Jiří Poláček, currently showing at Langhans Galerie, reveals two starkly different worlds co-existing in Prague in the early 1980s.
That was a grim period in Czechoslovakia. However, some poets and artists saw a rich beauty in the city during that time — rundown, drab and silent, with a mysterious and anxious darkness, seemingly by day as well as at night.
No contemporary writer describes Prague during that time better than Jáchym Topol, who was commissioned by the gallery to describe Poláček’s section of the exhibition. He writes, “Poláček transferred into his photographs all the gaping passageways, cracked walls, bashed corners of a smashed-up city, footholds for desperate people wandering in the night.”
Poláček shot only his own habitat — Smíchov, where he was born (in 1946) and kept a studio, and Žižkov. While his section of the exhibit, appropriately titled “At Night,” has only a few large photos from 1983 to 1985, together they transform mundane facades and street corners in these two working-class neighborhoods into surreal street-art installations.
One can imagine Poláček wandering the dark streets, drunkenly meandering home late at night from his favorite pubs, camera in hand, because his photos evoke such a blurred night-vision of Prague. Yet the artist wasn’t drunk when he made the photos. Poláček knew the streets intimately, and by photographing them repeatedly over the years, he hit upon a reliable way to illuminate the streets after dark, using long exposures and a flash with an old Kodak camera.
In the first room, Poláček has seven photos along one wall. But the room seems full because the works radiate in the space, especially one untitled photo of a street corner that shows wood and colored-glass panels, lit from the inside as well as the sidewalk. In this one alone, the combination of glowing green, blue and grayish rust (from metal panels between the glass) is as sublime as a low-lit room of Rothko paintings.
Upstairs there are only six more photos by Poláček, seemingly more staged and intentionally colored than those downstairs — desolate factories, old Czech cars, streets without people. But all abound with ghosts and celestial sparks of fire in blurred slow-motion.
By contrast, the black-and-white documentary photos by Libuše Jarcovjáková almost seem to clash with the aesthetic of Poláček’s work. However, the two artists do complement each other, not only because they photographed the same town in the same era, but also for their thoroughness in shooting a particular territory.
Jarcovjáková‘s section “Them” consists of two series of photos depicting two groups of outsiders, as starkly different from each other as night and day.
“Fraternal Assistance” (1982–84) is a series of photos of the first Vietnamese students who were sent to Czechoslovakia during the Normalization period. Without any prior training, Jarcovjáková became a Czech teacher for these Vietnamese immigrants, and also a trusted friend — perhaps the only Czech friend for most of them.
Jarcovjáková describes them in a text for the show: “It was an international collaboration between countries in the socialist camp, fraternal assistance, solidarity between nations. The first ones really believed that, at least for the first two weeks. When they went out into the streets, when they began to understand a bit, they lost their illusions.”
Her photos capture young Vietnamese people in their dorm rooms, relaxing in the park, trekking through the snow, getting drunk and dancing at parties. They look less comfortable in Czech pubs and other Czech social spaces.
One standout shows three young Vietnamese men in a pub, nervously speaking to a man seen only as a shadow, while a group of Czechs look on with smirking disdain.
The other room of Jarcovjáková’s photos, titled “The T-Club,” presents a carousel of photos taken at a small bar on Jungmannova street that she visited regularly around the same time that she was teaching Czech to Vietnamese students. Jarcovjáková’s photos don’t capture the T-Club on normal nights; instead, she has selected shots from special nights at the club, such as New Year’s Eve, Carnival, birthday parties and the celebration of the young wine called burčák. Thus the shabby little T-Club comes across in photos as a raging disco, something like a Czech version of the legendary Studio 54 in New York City.
The photos are projected on a wall, with a soundtrack of the worst New Wave and disco music of the era. However, the bad music only adds to the charm and power of the photographs. Sure, the music was lame, but the parties at T-Club are now immortal.
Just 20-odd years removed from the time of these photographs, Prague is a very different place. While no one is longing for a return to communism, they capture something that both Czechs and non-Czechs alike might pine for: the good old days (and nights).

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (6/02/2008):

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