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Vlastimil
Kula
Czech
photographer Vlastimil Kula was born in the town of Plzen in 1950. He was
able to travel to the west as a young man and lived and worked at odd jobs
in England, Canada and the USA. After returning home, as was his
obligation under then Soviet rule, he studied art photography at the
Prague Academy of Arts. He also studied theatre. These two curriculums
would naturally lead one towards artistic and personal freedom, but these
traits were especially pronounced in Kula given his experience traveling
to the "freedom-loving" West. He was a natural and vociferous
rebel against the power of the communist state. This led him into the very
capitalist profession of professional advertising.
After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, liberation followed and advertising
lost its rebellious appeal, so Kula gradually moved into art photography
where he could more forcefully challenge Czech society. Kula’s
photographs are mysterious and defiantly sexy. Frustrated by what he calls
the “boredom of pornography” and the mechanical depiction of sex, Kula
aims to distance himself from traditional genres by exploring uncharted
territory and pushing the limits of what people consider “art.” He,
his wife, and various men and women are the subjects of his shadowy
monochromes in which sex, taboo, love, passion, and rebellion are the key
themes.
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