Libuše Jarcovjáková

Libuše Jarcovjáková (born 5 May 1952) is a Czech photographer and educator, based in Prague.[1] Jarcovjáková photographed nightlife, minority groups and marginalised people in the 1970s and 1980s in Prague and West Berlin, and made self portraits.[2] She made diaristic work of her hedonistic lifestyle, and of the inhabitants of a clandestine gay bar that she visited almost nightly, in 1980s Prague, where the Communist state was institutionally homophobic.[3]

Life and work

Jarcovjáková was born in Prague in what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.[1] Her parents were painters.[2] She studied for an MA at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.[1] At the end of the 1970s she undertook a creative residency in Japan for several months.[1] In 1985 Jarcovjáková moved to West Berlin and in 1992 returned to Prague.[1] She has been teaching photography since the 1990s,[2] currently doing so at the College of Graphic Design and the Secondary School of Graphic Design[4] (VOŠ a SPŠ Grafická v Praze) in Prague.

Jarcovjáková's written diaries and photographs from Prague, West Berlin and Tokyo between 1971 and 1987, were published in the 2016 book Černé Roky (The Black Years).[5][6]

Between 1983 and 1985, Jarcovjáková photographed the inhabitants of a clandestine gay bar in Prague, called T-Club, which she frequented almost every night,[3][7] using black and white film and a flash. Her other subjects at this time were herself and Vietnamese and Cuban economic migrants. Though sex between people of the same gender was decriminalised in Czechoslovakia in 1962, people continued to be imprisoned for being openly gay.[3][8] Because the work depicted her own sexual deviance as well as that of people at T-Club, it was not shown[3][8] until 2008[9] and was published in 2019 as Evokativ. Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, described the work as having an "edgy diaristic approach, laying bare a life lived recklessly amid a period of political repression" [. . .] "images that pay little attention to formal concerns, but nevertheless capture a time and milieu in an uncompromising way."[10]

Publications

Publications by Jarcovjáková
  • Černé Roky: 1971–1987 = The Black Years: 1971–1987. Prague: Nakladatelství Wo-men, 2016. ISBN 9788090523968. Photographs, letters and journal entries. In English and Czech. Includes booklet titled The Black Years / English trial version, in English.
  • Evokativ. Prague: Untitled, 2019. ISBN 978-80-907568-0-9. With texts by Jarcovjáková and Lucie Černá. Edition of 1000 copies.

Publications paired with others
  • Ženy 60+. Prague: Nakladatelství Wo-men, 2018. Text by Pavla Frýdlová and photographs by Jarcovjáková. ISBN 9788090523975.[11]

Exhibitions
  • Anamnesis / Remembering, Galerie 1. Patro (Gallery 1st Floor), Prague, 2012[12]
  • T-Club, Langhans café, Prague, 2019[9][13]
  • Evokativ, Église Sainte-Anne d'Arles, Rencontres d'Arles, Arles, France, 2019[10][14][15]

Awards

References
  1. "Libuše Jarcovjáková". Rencontres d'Arles. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  2. "Libuše Jarcovjáková: Nikdy jsem nefotila něco, co jsem nežila". Czech Radio. 14 June 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  3. Seymour, Tom (5 July 2019). "Their Bodies Were Weapons: Dissident Photographers of the 1980s". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-26 – via NYTimes.com.
  4. "Češka Jarcovjáková je objevem festivalu v Arles". Týden. 4 July 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  5. "Libuše Jarcovjáková: The Black Years". Václav Havel Library. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  6. "Libuše Jarcovjáková – Book of Life". fotografmagazine.cz. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  7. "What to see at Les Rencontres d'Arles". British Journal of Photography. 1 July 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  8. "Behind the Curtain". British Journal of Photography. 7887: 78–88. September 2019. ISSN 0007-1196. OCLC 8198967765.
  9. "New exhibition puts 1980s clandestine Prague gay scene in spotlight". Radio Praha. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  10. O’Hagan, Sean (5 July 2019). "Stolen phones, British homes and wine for breakfast – Arles photography festival". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-08-25 – via www.theguardian.com.
  11. "Nakladatelství wo-men". Nakladatelství Wo-men. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
  12. "Rozpomínání fotografky Libuše Jarcovjákové". Czech Radio. 18 May 2012. Retrieved 2019-08-27.
  13. "Libuše Jarcovjáková: T-Club". prague.tv. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  14. "Libuse Jarcovjáková, les contretemps de Prague". Libération. 5 July 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  15. "Fotografka Libuše Jarcovjáková na festivalu fotografie v Arles". www.mzv.cz. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
  16. "Anglo-American University in Prague". Anglo-American University in Prague. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
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