Project 2

Tutor:

Josef PTÁČEK

Synopsis:

Students from any year in the study programme can participate in this project. The collective work will be based on the personal experience and knowledge of an issue from specialists.

Prerequisites:

Grading:

A credit - for approved explanatory essay and samples of photographs

A graded credit - awarded on the basis of completing individual tasks and handing in selected photographs. Another assumption to be awarded by the graded credit is 60% attendance in lectures, taking part in stated obligatory consultations and handing in agreed-on photographs in the digital form in TIF format with a resolution of 300 dpi and the longer side of each photograph being 250 mm.

Study Objectives:

Outline and Syllabus:

Description:

Although already 17 years passed from the fall of communism in then Czechoslovakia, many signs can be seen in the society until now. Except for the hardly seen bad habits in the behavior, there are also many everlasting, visible and concrete things as various buildings, memorials, interventions into landscape. They are being, sometimes not very obviously, conserved, thus commemorating the monstrous times. Mined out landscape, dams, panel housing estates, factories, silos, huge cowsheds and other agricultural buildings, culture houses, memorials, enormous fields, concrete village´s supermarkets and many other, even tiny, things. We would like to notice all these outcomes of the „glory of Communism“ and record their present look on photographs. How do the then celebrated buildings look now, what is their contemporary function, how do they appeal and which role do they play in today´s society. We are not only interested in the visual exchange of these places and objects though, but also the role they played or should have played then, how were they used by the Communist Party as an ideological tool and how these proclamations fulfilled, what was their result.

These conditions we want to observe at the seminars on texts, as are both some period materials of various natures - from newspapers cuttings to literary pieces - and texts from different times, which somehow relate to the given place of theme. By this confrontation of texts and contemporary taken photographs we will try to show manifestations of communism and how they are conserved in present times, what they mean today. The photographing will be accompanied by a series of lectures of various experts (historians, sociologists, polimetricians, urbanists, etc.), who will introduce the students with the given issue from different points of view. The whole process of teaching should be a strong commemoration of negative phenomena of not-so-long passed times.

The photographing will take place according to the number of enrolled students, on the basis of dividing of particular themes or locations, and according to a schedule created to make the traveling the most cost-effective. The photographs can be both coloured and black-and-white.

Mutual trips to chosen places of the Czech Republic will enable to live through a specific reality together and to be able to mutually reflect and discuss it. It is supposed to be more few-days trips.

The students will be lead to their own thinking about the given issue, to cooperation with one another, comforted to the whole - i. e. the final series. The emphasis is not on a creation of individual photographs. More important is the statement given by a convincing photographical form. The whole project will be topped by all the students present on a final exhibition form. In this phase there will be solved questions of choice of photographs, appropriate exhibition adjustment and a overall presentation. The final result will be an exhibition and a publication, which will be created after consultations and in cooperation with the graphical designer and an exhibition architect.

Assignments:

1) photographic intentions of the student in writing - till 31st October

2) contact sheets and selected pictures - ca 13x18 cm - handed in during the course of project, the dates will be specified by the supervisors

3) photographs, their size will be specified later

Supervised by: Mgr. Josef Ptáček

Contacts: ptacek.foto@seznam.cz, 602 461 949

Study materials:

Note:

Schedule for winter semester 2008/2009:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2008/2009:

	06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
Mon
Tue	místnost 112 Učebna KF (Lažanský palác) PTÁČEK J. 16:30–18:05 ODD WEEK (paralelka 1)
Fri
Thu
Fri

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

• Fotografie EN - bakalář (qualification subject)