3.10.2023
President Petr Pavel has this week visited the Presidential Moments photographic exhibition, prepared by the ČTK public news agency, which is now on display in the South Gardens of Prague Castle. Pavel said the exhibition, showing all Czech and Czechoslovak heads of state, from T. G. Masaryk to the current president, in various situations, is "a beautiful cross-section of our history."
"I find it very significant that the Presidential Moments exhibition on the occasion of the 105th anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia is being organised by an institution that is celebrating the very same anniversary, and that its reporters have had the opportunity, over the number of years, to collect incredible archives not only from the work but also from the private lives of all 12 Czechoslovak and Czech presidents, and then to convey them to the people not only as the 'men from posters', official pictures or official events, but also as the people who have leisure time and who have now and then done something wrong," Pavel assessed the outdoor exhibition.
ČTK Director General Jaroslav Kábele together with the co-authors of the exhibition, Radka Matesová Marková, the editor-in-chief of the news desk, and Petr Mlch, the editor-in-chief of the ČTK Photobank, showed the President round the exhibition.
During the tour of the exhibition, the president particularly appreciated the pictures that "make presidents human." "There is a number of them that I have to smile faintly at, especially those of mine, because not all of them are completely flattering. But on the other hand, that is exactly what it is all about," he added with a smile. Pavel is depicted at the exhibition as the brigadier general and commander of the Czech specialised forces in Kuwait in 2003, and as the president, for example during his first trips to the regions. Among other things, a ČTK photojournalist captured him with a cramp in his leg during this summer's biathlon relay race in the Jihlava Region.
Pavel does not perceive photographers, who accompany top politicians at almost any turn, as something inappropriate or distracting. "My dad gave me my first camera when I was about seven years old. It was a Pionýr bakelite camera. And since then, my dad and I have always competed to see who could take the best photos from holidays and trips. So, photography has been with me all my life. I have never looked at photographers as at the troublesome ones who hang around and get into one’s way with their cameras and lenses, and in fact, I do not actually find it disturbing even now that I am in office," said the president, who sees photographers as "those who convey beautiful pictures for the future."
The exhibition presents more than a hundred photographs from the ČTK archive that show presidents on their trips, the moments of their election and abdication, as well as the heads of state practicing sports and being sick, and reveal their relations to sport and culture. They are mapping the building and tearing down of the presidential cult of personality, and show the depiction of presidents in films and at the theatre.
The exhibition will be in the South Gardens of Prague Castle, just below the Bull Staircase near the Plečnik Lookout, until the end of October. Then it will move to Šumperk and at the end of the year, it will be held in Brno.