Photographic Conditions of Art History and the Current Photographic Studio of the Institute of Art History of CAS

Photographic Conditions of Art History and the Current Photographic Studio of the Institute of Art History of CAS

Katarína Mašterová - Martin Pavlis

Photographs of artworks and architectural monuments have been interrelated with the field of art history from its beginning. It was already clear back in the 19th century that this was not a mere mechanical activity and that each such photograph played an active role in the construction of art history. This small booklet, published to accompany an exhibition by the same name, explores the principal factors that influence the form and perception of documentary photography. These include the ordering or commission by a specific art historian, conditions for the process of photographing and the specific decisions made by photographers, as well as the context in which the resulting image is presented to the audience or viewer. Exemplified by the practice of the photographic studio of the IAH CAS, the book describes the life of photographs that comes to an end but that is also reinstated in the database of the institute’s special photographic archive referred to (in Czech) as ‘fototéka’. The publication illustrates these ideas on the example of four contemporary photographers employed in IAH CAS – Vlado Bohdan, Anežka Pithartová, Jitka Walterová and Petr Zinke, and provides an overview of their works created in the past quarter century.

First edition in Czech and in English, 36 pages, colour illustrations, Prague: Artefactum 2024

ISBN 978-80-53018-03-6

ISBN 978-80-53018-04-3 (PDF version)