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Libuše Jarcovjáková

  • Main title: T-club
  • Article teaser test: A legend of world photography and an untamed woman who defied everyone.
  • Article content:
    • Editor:

      Libuše Jarcovjáková (born 1952) is a Czech photographer and educator renowned for her candid, diaristic photography that captures the lives of marginalized communities and her own experiences in Communist-era Czechoslovakia and beyond.

      Born in Prague to painter parents, Jarcovjáková faced initial rejections from art schools due to her non-proletarian background. She was eventually admitted to the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, where she studied photography from 1977 to 1982.

      In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jarcovjáková documented the lives of the Roma and Vietnamese communities in Czechoslovakia, as well as the underground LGBTQ+ scene, particularly the T-Club in Prague. Her work from this period, characterized by raw, unfiltered images, was suppressed under the Communist regime and remained largely unseen until the 2000s. In 1985, she emigrated to West Berlin, where she continued her photographic practice while working in a luxury hotel. She returned to Prague in 1992 and later taught photography at various institutions, including the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň.

      Jarcovjáková's work has gained international acclaim through exhibitions in New York (2015), Berlin (2018), and at the Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival in 2019. Her monograph Evokativ was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards in 2019. In 2024, her life and work were featured in the documentary I'm Not Everything I Want to Be by Klára Tasovská, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival.

      Jarcovjáková's photography is celebrated for its intimate portrayals of personal and social realities, often drawing comparisons to the work of Nan Goldin.
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  • Website: http://www.jarcovjakova.com/
  • Details title: About this piece
  • Details list:
    • List text: 1982
    • List text: Photography
    • List text: 18,6 x 28 cm
    • List text: Archival inkjet print 
    • List text: Edition: 1/10 + 2 AP
    • List text: Acquired in 2025
  • Hits: 1685
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