Dílna Mikulov - Art symposium
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Antonín Kratochvíl


Antonín Kratochvíl (1947) is a world-renowned photojournalist. He left Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s; he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and later settled in the US where he has lived since. His photos have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Paris Match, Dispatches, and Fortune magazine, among others. Besides many other awards, he has twice won the First Prize of the World Press Photo competition (in 1997 and 2003). He photographed the genocides in Zaire and Rwanda, refugees in Bosnia and Afghanistan, AIDS victims in Zimbabwe, drug smugglers in Guatemala as well as the war in Iraq. He authored several books such as Broken Dream (1997) compiled of photos taken in post-communist countries over two decades, Vanishing (2005) depicting the destruction of nature, and Moscow Nights (2010) with photos taken in luxurious clubs of the Russian capital. He could only exhibit in his native country after the fall of communism. Besides his photojournalism, he is also an acclaimed portraitist. At the Mikulov Art Symposium this year, he made portraits in which he deformed the faces of the models with ropes, following up on his work from previous stays in 2006 and 2007. During his first appearance in Mikulov, he staged scenes inspired by the infamous photos showing torture of Iraqi prisoners by US troops (Hommage to Abu Ghraib), and he also shot portraits during his second stay in Mikulov.
www.antoninkratochvil.com


Dogma
Dogma
in cooperation with Honza Malý Jr. Photography, 100 × 70 cm; 2013