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The exhibition juxtaposes the work of photographers Harald Hauswald and Jindřich Štreit. The two were monitored and arrested and their photographs and negatives confiscated because of their portrayal ofeveryday life in their countries’ respective communist dictatorships. Subjected to relentless pressure, they developed sublime visual languages that convey the contradictions between everyday living conditions and state propaganda.
Hauswald’s photographic chronicles of the GDR in its final days are testimonial images with an underlying political critique of prevailing conditions. His works’ close proximity to reality soon led to arrests and countless raids on his home. Along with some of his “icons”, the exhibition also presents previously unpublished works by the photographer.
Štreit’s radical and poetic photographs of the rural populations of Bohemia and Moravia during the communist dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s are today considered classics of humanist photography. The photographer’s works are collected in the comprehensive illustrated volume Jindřich Štreit – Village People 1965–1990.