2024-03-21 04:43:50
David Bowie and I went looking for light and we found it, said Czech photographer Antonín Kratochvíl before Wednesday’s opening of an exhibition of his photographs in Prague’s DSC Gallery. The popular English rocker liked that the world-famous Czech creator approaches photography in a more journalistic, reportage style. That’s why he allowed himself to be immortalized by it.
The exhibition called Faces will last only until next Saturday, March 30. It also features portraits of Bob Dylan, Jean Reno, Keith Richards and Willem Dafoe. All of them were immortalized today by the 76-year-old self-taught portraitist of Hollywood stars, who escaped from Czechoslovakia to the USA in 1967 and obtained American citizenship in the following decade.
David Bowie originally wanted to be photographed only in the studio. “I told him ‘let’s go look for light’, that got him excited, so we walked for about four hours looking for light. And we found it, very graphic. It was a beautiful day, so we found hard light and shadows,” explains Antonín Kratochvíl, which captures emotions with extraordinary intensity.
Antonín Kratochvíl is one of the most famous Czech photographers. | Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna
Bowie chose him from 12 photographers. “He probably liked my approach, more journalistic and reportage. I always chose a place and researched beforehand what kind of light there was. Then I let people float through the environment I chose, and I took it only as a report,” he clarifies his approach Kratochvíl.
The exhibition at the DSC Gallery includes 23 of his large-format photographs. In the first part, you can see portraits of Bowie, in the second, for example, musicians Bob Dylan and Keith Richards, director Tim Burton or actors Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe and Jean Reno, whom he photographed in the French capital. “Back then, it was hard to find any mess in Paris, because they cleaned it up terribly. In this photo, we are at the construction site of the stadium for the World Cup,” Kratochvíl points out.
According to him, Bob Dylan was more difficult. “For seven years he forbade everyone to take his picture. And he chose me because I took a picture of Keith Richards,” he explains.
According to the photographer, when working with famous personalities, it is important to perceive yourself on the same level as them. “I have my value, they have their value, it’s one on one. Sometimes I also told them that I dreamed about them, which was bullshit, a psychological trick. Sometimes I also brought cigars, like with Jean Reno in Paris . We took pictures for five hours, he smoked my cigars and didn’t want to let me go,” she recalls.
Most of the photographs in the exhibition come from the 1990s. Kratochvíl says that he has others that he would like to show next time, for example Bruce Willis or the American singer-songwriter John Mellencamp.
This year, he will publish a book with photos of athletes called Body in Motion, which will contain, for example, pictures of 18-year-old Jaromir Jágr before he went to play in the American NHL, photos of Dominik Hašek and Martina Navrátilová.