Bohumír Prokůpek (1954 – 2008)

After leaving secondary school in 1974 Bohumír Prokůpek was employed as an artist by the South Bohemian Museum in České Budějovice, in the photographic laboratory of the Czech Press Agency (1975-1976), as photographic editor of Pressfoto magazine (1978-1985). From 1986 he was a freelance photographer and publicist. With his friends, he founded his own publishing house - Asco in 1990. He was a founder member of the Český dřevák - Czech Wooden Large Format Camera Group, along with Karel Kuklík, Jan Reich and Jaroslav Beneš. From 2002 he was leader of the Landscape Photography Studio at the Faculty of Photography at FAMU in Prague. He photographed landscape and nature, published, exhibited and was also involved in architecture in recent years. In 2003 he received the Czech Minister of the Environment´s Award for his photographic work, as well as the main prize from the Czech Interior Competition, for his design for the Lidice Monument.

In his photographic work, Bohumír Prokůpek worked with various formats ranging from cinema film to 20x25cm sheet film. Whereas his small-format photography gives us a very subjective or even mystical impression (late evening and nighttime photos, which are deliberately out of focus, coloured monochromes which are more like light paintings than photography), both his black-and-white and colour large-format photographs are eternal and romantic, and use elements of what he had learnt from his small-format photography. The photographs are directly in line with both Czech and world photographic traditions. His last great theme was the last remnants of untouched nature - in contrast to landscapes which are the work of mankind.