Ten days that shook the world

Historian Timothy Garton Ash said that in Poland the change from communism to capitalism took 10 years, in Hungary 10 months and in Czechoslovakia 10 days. November is the 20th anniversary of that "10-day" Velvet Revolution (Sametová revoluce) and opening Sept. 4 is "1989 Through the Eyes of Photographers," an exhibition organized by Czech Press Photo. It marks the anniversary by bringing together the most memorable images from that period.

The exhibition contains 300 photographs by 20 prominent Czech photographers. The images document the revolution starting with the brutal suppression of a student demonstration Nov. 17, 1989, to the mass protests that incident sparked, and on to the resignation of the entire communist leadership just seven days later on Nov. 24.

Daniela Mrázková, director of Czech Press Photo and curator of the exhibition, says she sought to show the individual events of 1989 as a part of a broader historical narrative. Alongside Czech students confronting fully-armed riot police with flowers in 1989 are police suppressing nationalist marches in the mid-1980s and images recounting the Soviet invasion of 1968.

"We wanted to create a kind of photo essay," Mrázková says, "so that we could tell the most important historical change in postwar Central Europe as a story."

Because the Velvet Revolution was a grassroots movement, many of the photographs document small acts of defiance by ordinary people. The exhibition commemorates thousands of Czechs for whom the Revolution is both personal and national history.

Mrázková's own experiences during the Revolution were a motivation behind the project.

"In November 1989, I was working on the catalog of an international exhibition," Mrázková says. "My daughter Michaela, who was a journalism student, came into my room and said, 'Mum, please don't worry, but I am going to take part in a demonstration against the bloody Communists.' So I got up and went with her, and, at that moment, I became part of the unbelievable events that followed."

Each of the images in the exhibition tells not just a story about the people in front of the camera, but about the person taking the photo itself. One memorable set of photos by Josef Ptáček documents the East German exodus in the summer of 1989, when East Germans flooded Czechoslovakia in hopes of eventually making their way to West Germany. The photos came about as Ptáček's girlfriend lived near the West German Embassy. When she told him that there were crowds of East Germans in the streets, Ptáček went to the embassy with his camera and began to photograph what he saw.

"An embassy official came up to me and asked me to come into the embassy," Ptáček recalls. "I was terrified; I thought I would be arrested. I went inside, and the embassy staff said to me that an international agreement had just been made, and East Germans could now go into West Germany through Czechoslovakia if they had a valid passport. He said, 'We need passport photos for all these people. Can you help?' So I stayed for three days and took photographs for around 3,000 passports."

All of the photographers in the exhibition found themselves not only documenting history but as key actors in the events. Many were themselves dissidents attending the protests. Like thousands of others, they were caught up in a groundswell of public dissent that closed 21 years of political repression. But, as time passes, it is no longer possible to assume that all Czechs have memories of the Velvet Revolution, Ptáček says.

"It is important that we don't forget our recent history," he says. "There is a new generation that has no memories of what happened in 1989 and before. This exhibition is for them."

Natalia O'Hara can be reached at
features@praguepost.com