Few have been able to capture the unique nature of Czech life under late socialism quite like photographer Iren Stehli.

While her arguably best-known and most personal time-lapse series, Libuna (1974–2009) documents the life of a Romani woman and her family in Prague’s Žižkov neighborhood, at the opposite end of the spectrum lies Prague Shop Windows (from 1978 to the present), an extensive analysis of the fluidity of public space. Between these two poles, however, many other themes and spaces emerge, captured in additional series, some of which remain virtually unknown to this day.

Iren Stehli grew up in Zurich, Switzerland, in a bilingual environment (her mother was Czech) and returned to Prague repeatedly beginning in the 1960s; after a brief stint studying Czech language and literature in the early 1970s, she began attending the Department of Photography at FAMU, which at the time represented an oasis of relative freedom.

It was there that her classmates belonged to a generation that, under the guidance of Anna Fárová, sought answers to the politically and aesthetically bleak situation in Czechoslovakia during the Normalization era, a situation that found its most striking expression in 1981 with the legendary exhibition 9&9 in Plasy, which capped off her previous solo exhibitions at Prague’s Činoherní klub.

From the very beginning, Stehli was fascinated by everyday life in the Czech Republic, so different from that of Switzerland at the time. Thanks to the studio of Dušan Šimánek and Jan Malý on Kubelíkova Street in Žižkov—which served as the hub of many shared activities—Žižkov soon became her home neighborhood. “One block down on Bořivojova Street lived Mr. Sláma, a tailor, and a little further on was Libuna, whom I would go on to photograph for the rest of my life. Gradually, things snowballed, and more series followed…“

One of her very first series was People (1975–1976), unpretentious portraits of Žižkov residents whom she approached in front of their homes and shops. These street portraits embody a blend of informality and, at the same time, the safe time and space afforded for posing. It was in Plasy that Stehli exhibited three life-size portraits; we now have the opportunity to see the rest of the series for the very first time. Stehli would later return to give the subjects their photographs, which eventually led her into their homes and, naturally, to the complementary series At Home (1975–81).

The series Doma, first exhibited at the Činoherní klub in 1978 (just as Sofia Rydet was launching a similar, sociologically monumental project in Poland), already had a completely solid framework and definition. It gave the people who rewarded the photographer with their trust and invited her into their private lives Stehli allows them the freedom to express their identity against the backdrop of their own tastes and desires, and in the midst of a seemingly uniformly dilapidated neighborhood, she discovers a colorful panorama of lifestyles and destinies.

A long-standing friendship connected Iren Stehli with her primary mentor Anna Fárová: “Aneta supported me and took an interest in me ever since my studies at FAMU; it was with her and Dušan Šimánek that I most often discussed my photos. I also sometimes assisted her in sorting through Sudek’s estate in the apartment on Úvoz.”

It is precisely the “post-Sudek” series Still Lifes (1975–2002) that serves as a sort of lifeless appendix to her earlier Žižkov series and, at the same time, in the absurdity and incongruity of its interior constellations, acts as a precursor to her later Prague Shop Windows.

Even after five decades (!), Irena Stehli’s Žižkov photographs still possess the same clarity, which, paradoxically, grows as her physical presence fades. Every adult photographed is now, at best, a retiree, and the infants of that time are celebrating their 50th birthdays (myself included). Yet their temperament, simplicity, kindness, and resignation from that time—imbued with trust in the young, approachable, and kind photographer—can still be observed intact today through her photographs.

Curator: Pavel Vančát