Preview: Photographing Prague Architecture 1848-1921

Prague is a city known worldwide for its beauty, especially with a mix of various historical layers of architectural development. As many old paintings, engravings and drawings show, Prague has changed remarkably over the centuries. Photographs taken 100 years ago depict familiar places with unfamiliar appearances and thus show very clearly the transformations the city has undergone. It is this period that is illuminated in a current exhibition, "Photographing Prague Architecture 1848-1921," in Old Town Hall.

The venue is an appropriate place to present historical photos of the city for many reasons, but one is particularly striking. The building's long history began in the first half of the 14th century. Jiří z Poděbrad was elected Czech king within its walls in 1458, and many other historical events are tightly linked to the hall. In May 1945, the building served as one of the centers of the Czech resistance against the Nazi occupation. The battles were fierce, and the hall fell under a tank attack. As a consequence, a fire destroyed the Eastern neo-Gothic wing, only a small part of which remains today. The prewar appearance of the hall can now only be seen in the photos in this exhibition.

"The point of this exhibition is to give the spectator an idea about the period's understanding of photography, specifically in Prague photographs, which show the tasks and possibilities of the period's photographic expression," Pavel Scheufler, the curator of the exhibition, tells The Prague Post.

The exhibition is book-ended by two dates: 1848 and 1922. In 1848, the first documented photo of Prague was taken, showing the St. Wenceslas Mass on the Horse Market (today's Wenceslas Square) that took place just before the uprising against the ruling Habsburg monarchy June 12. The year 1922 is when the so-called Greater Prague was formed by joining separate suburbs and outskirts to the city's historical core.

As this may suggest, the current exhibition is only the beginning of a larger project. Two more exhibitions are to follow, according to Scheufler.

"The next landmark will be the year 1960, when Prague was divided into 10 districts, and the so-called 'joined villages' were incorporated into the city," he says. "The third part, should it happen, will include views of the city from 1961 until today. The time milestones are thus 'changes of the city,' which interestingly correspond to changes in photography and photographic technique."

Very few photographs in the 19th century were devoted to shooting exteriors, as almost every shot taken was a portrait. All the photographs on display are thus quite unique - in part from a technical point of view, because at the very beginning, the Daguerreotype technique was used, and that means every photograph was a single, unique copy.

"Photography at that time was seen by the majority of people as kind of alchemy, where the technical fundamentals were out of their reach," Scheufler says.

The rare visions of bridges that no longer cross the Vltava River and architecture that formed the city were taken by early masters of photography and local pioneers including Jindřich Eckert, František Fridrich and František Krátký. All of the photographs on display come from Scheufler's personal collection, which was started by his grandfather in the 1920s.

"I particularly like the shot of Malostranské náměstí with the Radecký Memorial taken by František Krátký. After all, this photograph is also on the exhibition poster. It symbolizes everything essential from the photographic point of view, as well as the Czech identity," Scheufler says.

The way the photos are presented also deserves mention. The white interior of the gallery is very creative and serves well to promote such historical photography. The contrast of a modern, white interior with mostly black-and-white shots makes for a contrast as intriguing as that between these photos and Prague's contemporary appearance.

Filip Šenk can be reached at
fsenk@praguepost.com