{"id":5246,"date":"2026-04-13T13:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tobiaskucera.art\/?p=5246"},"modified":"2026-04-27T23:14:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:14:36","slug":"digitalizace-fotoarchivu-meho-otce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tobiaskucera.art\/en\/digitalizace-fotoarchivu-meho-otce\/","title":{"rendered":"What does my father\u2019s archive reveal?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Update 18. 4. 2026: <\/strong>A report<\/a> on the project by \u010cesk\u00fd rozhlas (Czech Radio).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current status:<\/strong> A public fundraising campaign is underway that would allow us to dedicate ourselves to digitisation full-time. If you, like me, see value in this project that should be accessible to others, please consider supporting it financially or by sharing it. Without financial support, given the scale of the archive, the entire process could take several years. The project can be found here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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>> Public fundraising campaign for the project <<<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The archive of negatives and slides belonging to my father, photographer Old\u0159ich Ku\u010dera<\/strong>, contains approximately twenty thousand frames. He has been taking photographs since he was thirteen and has never stopped. He entered the field of photography professionally through forensic medicine, from which he was dismissed in the early 1980s for political reasons; he returned there once again after 2004. However, he found his greatest passion in documenting the life around him<\/strong>. He gradually became a truly independent photographer<\/strong> who rarely worked on commission, a fact evident in his work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I began pursuing photography professionally myself, I became increasingly interested in my father\u2019s photographs. I am intimately familiar with the family albums and the slide shows from my childhood, but he had kept his earlier work \u201cin a drawer.\u201d There are only a few enlarged photographs. For financial reasons, he never got around to publishing them. To my surprise, I discovered an extensive archive of film material that shocked me not only by its volume but also by its relatively precise organisation. As I went through it, I realised that the photographs had to be published \u2014 they contain many historically valuable documents<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example the first visit of Johan Paul II. in Poland in 1979, fr. Roger from Taiz\u00e9 community in Prague in 80’s, Buddy Rich on jazz festival, The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989, underground \u2014 an illegal catholic movement, Mather Teresa in Brno in 1985, Petr Eben (Czechoslovakian classical composer), folk singers like Jaroslav Hutka, Jarom\u00edr Nohavica, Vladim\u00edr Merta or Vlastimil T\u0159e\u0161\u0148\u00e1k and many, many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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