Lecture in language
Tomki Němec (CZE)
photographer
„Taking pictures is like hockey or football, everyone tends to tell you how to do it. That is the reason why you have to define your domain - just as I have defined that I want to take pictures in black and white and not in colour.“
He is one of the leading Czech photographers; he has been a personal photographer of Václav Havel for several years. He took pictures of Karel Schwarzenberg's presidential campaign. Many of his photographs have been exhibited around the world and have won prestigious awards. His famous photo of President Václav Havel, surprised by a sea wave, was included in the traveling exhibition World Press Photo. He won the 2004 Czech Press Photo Prize for his collection of Life of a Czech Minority in the Romanian region of Banat.
He entered the unofficial photographic scene with his work in the 1980s. He has cooperated with foundations in the non-profit sector, participated in grant projects and exhibitions. Between
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He entered the unofficial photographic scene with his work in the 1980s. He has cooperated with foundations in the non-profit sector, participated in grant projects and exhibitions. Between 2007 and 2010 he photographed for weekly magazine Respekt, with which he had cooperated after the revolution in 1989. Many of his photos have been published in print around the world.
In 2016, on the occasion of Václav Havel's 80th birthday he published his photographic book “Václav Havel - Tomki Němec, Photography”, which became a bestseller and required a reprint. In the same year, he organized an exhibition of large-format photographs called HAVEL at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art, which was visited by over 36,000 spectators in four months.
He takes black and white documentary photographs by mobile phone and presents them on social networks. The theme of his free work is almost always an "ordinary" man in his everyday situations, which expresses not only his personal destiny, but is also a sort of document on the history and politics that affect him.