Miroslav Machotka: Fragments

Miroslav Machotka (*1946) is unique outsider whose work ranks among the most distinctive examples of Czech photography from the second half of the twentieth century. Machotka took the widespread concept of street photography and transformed in into a concentrated search for a photographic language founded primarily on a careful observation of the city´s details, cropping reality in the viewfinder and translating it into a two-dimensional yet multilayered black-and-white image. Like a fisherman, he patiently catches bits and piece of reality and then tries to figure out how to get the most out of them. In Machotka´s hand, a walk with camera becomes a risky journey in search of visual poems that emerge from the seemingly banal streets of Prague.