Černé roky (The Black Years)

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Presentation by Nakladatelství wo-men (excerpts):

"The book Černé roky (The Black Years) introduces the authentic photographic and literary journals of the influential underground photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, also known as the Czech Nan Goldin. Spanning the years 1971–1987, the journals wring out the black-and-white everydayness of Prague, Berlin and Tokyo, uncovering the beauty of the era as well as its decay.

(...) The book offers an unexpected combination of photographs, journals and letters mapping out 17 years of the raw life of an unsubmissive woman artist.

Libuše has always moved in extremes. She has lived in bars, worked graveyard shifts at a printing company, gone through dozens of lovers of both sexes, photographed at semilegal gay clubs, even taught the Czech language to Cubans and Vietnamese – while, at the same time, moving through respected artistic circles. She was acquainted with the Czech photographic elite, including photographer Anna Fárová, as well as with the artists of the era (i.e. Karel Vaca or the twin painters Jitka Válová and Květa Válová). She photographed in Japan, working for global brands such as Comme des Garçons or Pasha, and then dove straight back down to the bottom, into the black-and-white everydayness of the Communist regime. She was continuously overstepping the borders of both Western countries and social stereotypes, pushing through the era’s stiff manners and morals.

Černé roky (The Black Years) documents the real life of people living in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s – or, perhaps, the life they were afraid to live. Libuše was able to stand up to the abortion commission, the secret police and, last but not least, her complicated father. She photographed and documented everything she saw – and The Black Years is the living proof."

This book is a project carried out by Barbora Baronová, publisher at Nakladatelství wo-men, literary documentarian, and the books editor and Lucia L. Fišerová, curator, photography historian and the book's photography editor.

An important retrospective exhibition of Libuše Jarcovjáková' work, titled Evokativ, was organised during the Rencontres d'Arles 2019 festival.

Outside of two essays at the ending of the book translated in English, the text is in Czech only throughout the book.

460 pages + inserted booklet - Hardcover w/ plastic DJ

Nakladatelství wo-men, 2016

Format : 20 x 28 cm

New - Mint condition