Vladimír Kunc

* 1955

  • „It was great that here [in Havlíčkův Brod] we had a bunch of people who lead that all just fine, not only Havlíčkova mládež (Havlíček's Youth) but also Jirka Černý, Tomáš Holenda and others who were great organisers. I was deciding whether to film the general strike in Prague or in Brod. Then I told to myself that I would be in Brod and I think it was a good decision. The strike here was truly interesting, it was clear, calm. The organisers told the audience not to boo at the speakers but when they would disagree, they should turn their backs. I still see how one Communist started saying something about children and the whole square turned their backs. Nobody shouted, all the people on the square were turned away Those were nice things."

  • "At about that time, I joined the national group Oči (Eyes), that was a breaking point. Out of sudden, it was said that everything we photograph is - I don't even want to use that word. And that from today on, we only shoot the truth. Then we did a lot of interesting projects. And it was carried over to the photographers' club in Havlíčkův Brod where we started a group, Habr (Hornbeam), and we decided that we would shoot truth as well. With the group, we would photograph the usual themes, such as the 1st May celebrations but we wanted to show them not the way the 1st of May would be photographed but what was it all about, it was a sort of documentary about ordinary life."

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    Havlíčkův Brod, 22.08.2019

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We have been chasing art but the true nature of things eludes us.

Vladimír Kunc in August 2019
Vladimír Kunc in August 2019
zdroj: Post Bellum

Vladimír Kunc was born on the 3rd of October in Havlíčkův Brod. The family lived in the neigbourhood of Dolík, close to the nearby Petrkov where his parents worked in a co-op farm. He went to elementary school in Havlíčkův Brod, he got his land-surveyor education at Secondary Technical School of Land Surveying in Prague - Hrdlořezy; after graduation, he went to study geodesy and cartography at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical Unversity. At that time, he already devoted a lot of time to amateur filming and photography, he participated at exhibitions and in contests where he won some acclaim. After his one year of compulsory army service, he got a job at the Cadastral Office in Havlíčkův Brod. In the second half of the 1980‘s, he became a professional photographer when he got employed by the cultural centre in Havlíčkův Brod. He collaborated with the local press, he was a member of a photographers‘ group, Oči (Eyes). In his two films, Čas očekávání (Time of Expectations) and Fragmenty revoluce (Fragments of Revolution), he caught on film how the Velvet Revolution proceeded in Havlíčkův Brod. He built a video studio, he produced regional news clips for the Nova and Prima TV stations and later, he established his own photography and film company. His long term topics are Šumava, Czech Highlands and his native Havlíčkův Brod, he published several books featuring his photographs.