Jiří Hanke: Photographs 1973–2018 19. 3. 2019 – 18. 8. 2019

The documentarian Jiří Hanke (born 1944) deals with long-term, socially focused projects. His photographs have often been inspired by his native town of Kladno. His oldest closed photographic series is entitled People from Podprůhon 1974–1989 (published in book form in 1995). The historical value of documenting the lifestyle of a vanishing working-class colony was obvious even at the time of its inception. The historically grounded testimonies of human existence at the same time represent a general statement reaching beyond the borders of the given region. Hanke’s key series Views from the Window of My Flat consists of snapshots taken from 10 September 1981 to 10 January 2003 (published in book form in 1994 and 2013). An old double-portrait of Hanke with his father, whose photographic talent he inherited, led him to the series The Echoes of a Generation (1998). Since 1986, Hanke has extended it by other diptychs or more comprehensive series of portraits of parents and children. A cross-section of his extensive oeuvre, prepared on the occasion of Hanke’s 75th birthday, also includes his other series featuring classic black-and-white images: Paris Fragments, TV Image, Echoes and Periphery. The curator of the retrospective exhibition is Josef Moucha, the author of the monograph Jiří Hanke (2008).