2024-02-15 22:16:17
We forget the bad quickly, we keep the good memories. Over time, the gray period of lack of freedom and fear will give rise to nostalgic Pelíšky. The exhibition of the photographer Dana Kyndrová in Galeria 4 in Cheb reminds us how it really was at a time when the truth was not allowed, people ended up in prison for their opinions and the ruling party had its own armed forces. And it also shows how this regime has fallen apart.
Dana Kyndrová started taking photographs fifty years ago, in 1973 to be precise, and the current exhibition in Gallery 4 in Cheb was created precisely for these “fifties”. It is called Normalization – November 89 – Departure of troops and will last until March 8.
“Curator Zbyněk Illek asked me last year if I would like to do a retrospective exhibition for my anniversary,” says the photographer. But in the end, she decided that sometimes less is more. “I couldn’t imagine a retrospective, I’ve photographed very different projects over the years, and there would be a risk of an incoherent mix of images,” she explains.
Dana Kyndrová: Normalization – November 89 – Withdrawal of troops
Exhibition of photographs in Gallery 4 in Cheb. It takes place from January 19 to March 8. The curator is Zbyněk Illek. Open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. More information on the website: www.galerie4.cz
In the end, she decided that the annual exhibition would consist of three parts. On one floor of Gallery 4, you can see pictures reflecting the rituals of the normalization period, such as May Day parades, celebrations of the Great October Socialist Revolution and Victory February, or the Spartakiad. There are also photographs from 1988, when harbingers of the fall of the communist regime were already appearing, and then footage from November 1989. On the second floor, photographs documenting the departure of Soviet troops are exhibited, which marked the end of the fall of the communist regime. There are a total of 150 photographs in the exhibition.
A time to remember. And no nostalgia
Unfreedom, brainwashing, manipulation of people, pervasive fear, surveillance, arrest and oppression of all who were inconvenient to the ruling regime. All these were typical elements of the totalitarian regime, which were also manifested during the actions that Dana Kyndrová calls “rituals of normalization”.
“For her, the schizophrenia of normalization was visually concentrated at these manifestations, when people criticized the regime in private, but more or less voluntarily participated in these events, thus supporting it willy-nilly,” says curator Zdeněk Illek in the text of the exhibition.
“I went to photograph a communist demonstration for the first time in 1973 on Wenceslas Square, when I was eighteen; since then I have been going to them regularly. I realized that the photographs of May Day parades and other communist events will one day be historic,” says Kyndrová. She did not even avoid arrest – during the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution on the Old Town Square in 1977 or on October 28 at the unauthorized protest demonstration for the founding of the republic in 1988.
October 28, 1988, Wenceslas Square, Prague | Photo: Dana Kyndrová
Some of the photos from 1988 survived only because she gave one of her two cameras to her mother before her arrest. The films from the device she had with her were confiscated after her arrest and disposed of, as was customary at the time.
The departure of Soviet troops: the officers were bothered, the soldiers didn’t care
When the decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia was made after November 1989, it was a turning point that confirmed that not only the communist regime in Czechoslovakia had fallen, but that the Soviet empire was also falling apart.
“Soviet soldiers themselves perceived him differently. You could see from the officers and their mistresses that they were angry, they had a good time here. Ordinary soldiers didn’t care,” says Dana Kyndrová. “One told me: it doesn’t matter if I’m in the barracks here or in Ukraine.”
The last Czech bread. Soviet soldiers leave Milovice (1991). | Photo: Dana Kyndrová
The fact that she could take photographs in the Soviet barracks (which would have been unthinkable before) was initially helped by the establishment of a parliamentary commission for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Later, she managed to get to the Soviet barracks even without her help. Once, for example, a Russian officer invited her to Lysá nad Labem for a ceremony before leaving the barracks.
“We were going there, on the way he stopped at a pub and said: Let’s go for a beer,” describes the photographer. She didn’t really want to, she wondered what people would think. But the reaction was different than she expected. A loud ‘Hello Vasya!’ echoed throughout the pub. “So I asked one guy: It’s a good thing they’re leaving, isn’t it? And he said: Look, we don’t care, we did business with them.”
About the photo that didn’t happen and the pink tank
The soldiers were already lined up in Lysá. “Suddenly I saw one running with a bagel and completely scared,” the photographer says. It would be a great photo. “But as a photographer, you also have to know the limits of how far you can go. In the end, I didn’t pick up the camera and take a picture. The officer was watching me and then he told me: if you picked it up, I would fire you immediately.”
While photographing the departure of the troops, she experienced only one unpleasant situation, in April 1991, shortly after David Černý painted a Smíchov tank pink. “I was taking photos at the Milovice railway station, from where the transports to Moscow were leaving. And suddenly an officer came to me with two soldiers with machine guns, saying that I had to leave immediately. So I objected that it was not a barracks, but a public railway station, and he got angry: You know what you’ve done, you’ll regret it one day, you desecrated the liberation monument! It totally messed with him,” he describes.
Dining room decoration, Ralsko 1990 | Photo: Dana Kyndrová
Although Dana Kyndrová mostly photographs in black and white, color photographs were also taken during the departure of the troops (these can also be seen in Gallery 4 in Cheb). They depict crumbling communist billboards, from which aggressive yellow and red colors shine. “I photographed ordinary life in black and white, and in between are the colors of communist propaganda. My photographs are not a chronicle of the departure of troops, it is my view of the Soviet empire disintegrating and ending. Communist propaganda is collapsing and the ordinary person who is in between, it always takes everything away.”