Jaromír Funke: bez názvu (kompozice s koulí), 1923
To mark the 120th anniversary of the birth of the world-renowned Czech photographer, teacher and writer on photography Jaromír Funke (1896–1945), Leica Gallery Prague has prepared an exhibition devoted exclusively to the most important segment of his work – his avant-garde studies in the style of functionalism, new objectivity, abstraction and surrealism. Some of Funke's photographs from the 1920s, with their pioneering use of light and translucence not only as compositional elements but as subjects in themselves, rank among the most radical examples of abstraction in international photography. His cycles Reflexes, exploring the phantasmagorical opposition between reality and reflection, and Time Lasts, capturing eerie encounters between disparate objects in unexpected contexts, were the first surrealist works of Czech photography. Avant-garde tendencies are also evident in his photographs of architecture and details of industrial buildings, as well as in his nudes, portraits, landscapes and social documentary shots. The exhibition, which beside original period prints of his most famous images also presents some of his lesser-known and hitherto unpublished work, has been put together by Vladimír Birgus with the kind assistance of Funke's daughter, Miloslava Rupešová.
