As photojournalists go, Antonin Kratochvil has sunk his teeth into his fair share of upheaval and human catastrophes whilst going about his documentation of the time in which he lives. As people go, Kratochvil's own refugee life has been much in the way the same as what he has rendered on film. Kratochvil's unique style of photography is the product of personal experience, intimate conditioning and not privileged voyeurism.
Over the years his fluid and unconventional work has been sought by numerous publications stretching across widely differing interests. From shooting Mongolia's street children for the magazine published by the Museum of Natural History to a portrait session with David Bowie for Detour, from covering the war in Iraq for Fortune Magazine to shooting Deborah Harry for a national advertising campaign for the American Civil Liberties Union, Kratochvil's ability to see through and into his subjects and show immutable truth has made his pictures not facsimiles but uncensored visions.
And yet, what set his kind apart from the many is his consistency and struggle to carry on. For Kratochvil this fact comes in the form of his numerous awards, grants and honorable mentions dating back to 1975. The latest of these are his two, first place prizes at the 2002 World Press Photo Awards in the categories of general news and nature and the environment. The next is the 2004 grant from Aperture publishing for Kratochvil's study on the fractious relationship between American civil liberties and the newly formed Homeland Security since the World Trade Center bombings.
In addition, Kratochvil's fifth book Vanishing was presented in April 2005 and marks another significant milestone for the craft to which he belongs. Vanishing represents a collection of natural and human phenomena that on the verge of extinction. What makes this book so innovative is the twenty years it has taken to produce, making it not only historical from the onset, but a labor of love and a commitment to one man's conscience.
Created in 1973–74 and previously unpublished in English in its entirety, Circus Sideshow, by Czech-born American photojournalist Antonin Kratochvil (born 1947), offers an amazing pageant of tightrope walkers, jugglers, snake women, giants, dwarves, contortionists and fire eaters at a circus in Gibsonton, Florida, a small coastal town near Tampa.
The town was then known as a winter vacation hotspot for circuses, a place to recharge before setting out on their spring and summer cross-country tours.
Visiting the mobile homes, caravans and trailers of the performers, and walking through their narrow alleys and circus tents, Kratochvil was able to photograph freely and intimately, and his black-and-white photographs testify to his vision of them as people expelled from society, but [who] were able to maintain their dignity. In 1974 he sent his photographs to the New York editorial office of American Photo, which the magazine’s art director, Jean-Jacques Naudet, printed as a ten-page report. Circus Sideshow documents an amazing lost American subculture.
Capturing photojournalist Antonin Kratochvil within the context of his work, this examination shows how the artist has sunk his teeth into his fair share of upheaval and human catastrophes while going about his documentation of the time in which he lives.
Kratochvil's unique style of photography is displayed as the product of personal experience, intimate conditioning, and unprivileged voyeurism. This bilingual edition includes English and Czech.
Antonín Kratochvíl was born in Czechoslovakia in 1947, the son of a local photographer, and the youngest of three children. On September 13, 1967, unable to endure the persecution in his homeland, he escaped under the barbed wire of the country's border with Austria. A four-year period of refugee camps, hostile foreign countries, and separation from family and friends ensued.
In 1972, Kratochvíl moved to the United States' West Coast to begin work as an editorial photographer and photojournalist. Practicing in the tradition of humanist photography, he has since captured countless pictures around the world of social unrest and war, documenting people in extreme situations and crisis conditions. The inhuman situation of children in economically weak parts of the globe is a topic returned to frequently. In the essay that accompanies this retrospective of his life's work, fellow photo- and print journalist Michael Persson notes that Kratochvíl's accomplishments have been a retracing in pictorial form of his own hellish life.
He has chosen to document those who are alone, forgotten, reviled and punished, much in the same way that he himself was treated. This volume is the first to provide an overview of his thematically organized publications Broken Dream, Mercy, Incognito and Sopravvivere.
By Antonin Kratochvil, Billy Bob Thornton, Mark Jacobson
Publisher : Publisher : Arena Editions
2001 | 160 pages
In this, his second book of photographs, Antonin Kratochvil turns his camera away from the human catastrophe and destruction he portrayed in Eastern Europe to reveal another side of modernity - the broad-reaching spectrum of the entertainment industry. Kratochvil's unique take on the famous and fashionable is not the candy-coated imagery so prevalent in today's fashion and movie magazines.
His work underscores the physical and psychological intensity of the creative men and women who have sat before his camera with images not designed to flatter but rather created to reveal something below the surface. Mostly taken on assignment for Detour, W, GQ, and Premiere, Kratochvil's celebrity portraits have never before been assembled in a book. Incognito is the first such compilation. It shows off the photographer's expressionistic, gritty, and sometimes dark style that has become a unique signature in the world of editorial and portrait photography.
Diana Cheren Nygren is a fine art photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her work explores the relationship of people to their physical environment and landscape as a setting for human activity. Her photographs address serious social questions through a blend of documentary practice, invention, and humor.
Castro Frank is a Los Angeles based visual artist who has translated his personal experiences of growing up in the San Fernando Valley into a signature journalistic and candid approach to photography.
Emerald Arguelles is a photographer and editor based in Savannah, GA. As a young visual artist, Emerald has become an internationally recognized photographer through her explorations and capturing of Black America.
Dave Krugman is a New York based Photographer, Cryptoartist, and Writer, and is the founder of ALLSHIPS, a Creative Community based on the idea that a rising tide raises all ships. He is fascinated by the endless possibilities that exist at the intersection of art and technology, and works in these layers to elevate artists and enable them to thrive in a creative career. As our world becomes exponentially more visual, he seeks to prove that there is tremendous value in embracing curiosity and new ideas.
I first discovered Lenka Klicperová's work through the submission of her project 'Lost War' for the November 2021 Solo Exhibition. I chose this project for its strength not only because of its poignant subject but also for its humanist approach. I must admit that I was even more impressed when I discovered that it was a women behind these powerful front line images. Her courage and dedication in covering difficult conflicts around the world is staggering. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
James Hayman is a photographer as well as a film / television director, producer, and cinematographer based in Los Angeles. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
John Simmons is a multi-talented artist whose work has spanned across decades. Born in Chicago and coming of age during the Civil Rights Era, Simmons' photography started at the peak of political and racial tension of the 1960s, mentored by a well known Chicago Civil Rights photographer, Bobby Sengstacke.
Photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in late 2020, The Day May Break is the first part of a global series portraying people and animals impacted by environmental degradation and destruction. An ambitious and poetic project picturing people who have all been badly affected by climate change - some displaced by cyclones that destroyed their homes, others such as farmers displaced and impoverished by years-long severe droughts. We asked Nick Brandt a few questions about the project.
For the last forty-five years, artist Barbara Cole has been recapturing the otherworldly mysteries of early photography in a body of work that flows in and out of time.
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