5 November 2026 – 16 January 2027
Czech Centre Paris, 18 Rue Bonaparte, Paris, France
The Czech Centre Paris is hosting the exhibition FAMU: Y A PAS PHOTO, which explores five decades of photography education at the school. The selection of works includes pieces by students who have also made their mark at UMPRUM: Lucie Sasínová from the Studio of Fine Arts III, and Vavřinec Doubek and Jan Cestr from the Studio of Photography II, the latter currently undertaking an internship at UMPRUM.
The exhibition considers photography’s shifting status through selected works, both recent and historical, by students and graduates of the Department of Photography at FAMU.This reflection on photography’s past and present is framed not only by the medium’s bicentenary, but also by the 80th anniversary of the internationally renowned film school and the 50th anniversary of its Department of Photography.
Jan Cestr and Vavřinec Doubek are exhibiting their collaborative work Silver, which received the Design Without Borders award in the Photography category, supported by the Czech Centre in Vienna. Their installation is the outcome of an art-research project centered on silver — its mining, usability, and recycling. The largest part of the exhibited project consists of photographs capturing the remnants of silver mining in Jáchymov in the 16th century, addressing the problematic nature of mining and showing that this highly topical issue has in fact accompanied us since the Middle Ages. This layer is complemented by a small plate silver-plated with silver we produced in our darkroom as a byproduct of analog photography — silver thus functions here both as subject matter and as material. The whole is rounded off by quotes from the period book De re metallica, which defend mining of that time and reveal that advocates of mining still use arguments very similar to those of 500 years ago.
Lucie Sasínová is represented in the exhibition by a video SEARCH, FIND, USE: On the Labour That Makes Things Move draws on a stereoscopic reading of the history of the mediation of movement, allowing two seemingly opposing phenomena to be viewed simultaneously: on the one hand, the disciplining of the body and the maximization of efficiency; on the other hand, the seizures movements of a medium interpreted as messages from the beyond. Throughout the histories of automation and automatism, the body is ruled by an invisible force through this mediation and becomes merely an instrument. Through these comparisons, the video seeks to reveal the irrational and occult parallels underlying the history of rationalization — a narrative that has, in part, shaped the contemporary conditions of production and labour.
Curator: Noemi Purkrábková
Photo: Jan Cestr
