Viktor Kolář – born in 1941 in Ostrava.
His interest in photography was sparked in childhood by his father—a photographer, cameraman, and owner of a photographic supply store. In 1964, he graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Ostrava. He worked as a primary school teacher for a year and, after completing his military service, became a librarian.
Following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he emigrated to Canada, where he lived until 1973. There, he took on various jobs—working in a molybdenum mine, in steel mills as a labourer, as a photographic lab technician, a photojournalist for an Italian minority newspaper, and as an independent photographer.
Upon returning to Ostrava, he worked in steel mills and later as a stage decorator in a theatre. Since 1984, he has been working as a freelance photographer. In 1994, he began teaching at the Department of Photography at the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he became a professor in 2005.
He has held numerous solo exhibitions, including at Optica Gallery in Montreal (1973), Cannon Gallery in Amsterdam (1984), Prague House of Photography (1991), Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco (1991), Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne (1998), Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava (1999), Leica Gallery in New York (2002), Bratislava City Gallery (2011), Moravian Gallery in Brno (2011), Gallery of the City of Prague (2013), and Sprengel Museum in Hanover (2015).
In 1991, he received the Mother Jones Foundation Award in the USA. His photographs are part of numerous prestigious collections, including those at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, the Art Institute of Chicago, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
“Towards the Present, Personal Testimony“
… When I returned home to Ostrava from my emigration to Canada (1968–73), I saw the differences between Canada and Czechoslovakia more clearly. I felt ready to document the patterns of “political normalisation” and “traditional life” through a subjective documentary approach.
This “episode” lasted until 1989, when the political system shifted, bringing the rise of wild Eastern European capitalism—marked by newfound freedom in entrepreneurship and travel. Along with it came increased access to money and consumerism, all aspects I had already encountered in Canada, including shopping centres and the culture of mass consumption.
