Markéta Luskačová Explained

Markéta Luskačová (born 1944) is a Czech photographer[1] known for her series of photographs taken in Slovakia, Britain and elsewhere. Considered one of the best Czech social photographers to date, since the 1990s she has photographed children in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and also Poland.[2]

Biography

Luskačová was born in Prague. In 1968 she graduated from Charles University there with a thesis on religion in Slovakia.[3] During her stay in Slovakia, she became familiar with the old Christian rites and decided to return with a camera to document the surviving traditions. Her thesis was titled Poutě na Východním Slovensku (Pilgrimages in East Slovakia).[4] Following that she studied photography at FAMU,[1] in this period photographing in Slovakia and Poland.

From 1970 to 1972, Luskačová photographed stage performances of the Za branou theatre, founded by director Otomar Krejča. However, the theatre was banned by communists in the spring of 1972. The same year, she was allowed to display the cycle Pilgrims in the Gallery of Visual Arts in Roudnice nad Labem (the curator of the exhibition was the photography theorist and art historian Anna Fárová).

In 1971, Luskačová married the poet Franz H. Wurm (native of Prague and a British citizen). Wurm, terrified by the "Normalization" in Czechoslovakia, left the country and Luskačová asked the state authorities for permission to visit her husband abroad. After several short visits she received a form for emigration (1975) and went to live in England.[4] However, in an interview she claimed: "Bohemia, Prague and Šumiac have never ceased to be my home. I always took my life abroad as a kind of stopgap that stretched to be a considerable part of my life."[4]

In the 1970s and 1980s, the communist censorship attempted to conceal her international reputation. Her works were banned in Czechoslovakia, and the catalogues for the exhibition Pilgrims in the Victoria and Albert Museum were lost on their way to Czechoslovakia.

Luskačová started photographing London's markets in 1974.[5] In the markets of Portobello Road, Brixton and Spitalfields, she "[found] a vivid Dickensian staging".

As a Magnum Photos nominee, Luskačová photographed Chiswick Women's Aid in the 1970s. Shortly afterwards, she and the photographer Chris Killip had a son, Matthew. The photographs remained unpublished until 2020.[6]

In 2016 she self-published a collection of photographs of street musicians, mostly taken in the markets of east London, under the title To Remember: London Street Musicians 1975–1990, and with an introduction by John Berger.

Exhibitions

Publications

Books of work by Luskačová

Zines of work by Luskačová

Notes

  1. News: Sarah. Phillips. 2020-04-11. Markéta Luskačová's best photograph: Ginger the musician. The Guardian. 22 August 2012. 0261-3077. www.theguardian.com.
  2. Web site: Urban Encounters: Rethinking Landscape. Goldsmiths, University of London. 11 April 2011.
  3. Mellor, No Such Thing as Society, p. 53.
  4. The Photogeny of Identity (2006), p. 205.
  5. Mellor, No Such Thing as Society, p. 154.
  6. Ayla Angelos, "Markéta Luskačová's Chiswick Women's Aid 1976–77 is finally brought to light after 44 years", It's nice that, 31 July 2020. Accessed 15 October 2020.
  7. "Side Gallery Exhibitions 1977–1994", Amber Online. Archived by the Wayback Machine on 3 March 2016.
  8. http://www.sca-art.cz/artists/Galerie/943.htm List of exhibitions, 1995–2008
  9. http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-aad-no-such-thing-as-society.htm Press release
  10. http://www.nmf.cz/en_article/the-photogeny-of-identity-the-memory-of-czech-phot Exhibition notice
  11. http://www.moravska-galerie.cz/en/exhibitions/the-third-side-of-the-wall/ Exhibition notice
  12. Web site: Tate. 2019-01-19. Markéta Luskačová: Until 12 May 2019 – Display at Tate Britain. Tate.
  13. https://www.rrbphotobooks.com/products/marketa-luskacova-by-the-sea-photographs-from-the-north-east-1976-1980 RRB's description
  14. https://www.caferoyalbooks.com/shop/markta-luskaov-chiswick-womens-aid-197677 Café Royal's description
  15. https://www.caferoyalbooks.com/ireland/markta-luskaov-ireland-197273?fbclid=IwAR21-EQ-DvvjhCaGUcaG8z39VMRvihcfdSUtRBiBbCnHRtBceA6BkVUtrE8 Café Royal's description

Sources

External links

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