„Mother“ of Slovak social photography, activist and student of Bauhaus. These were not the only roles played by the established Slovak photographer Irena Blühová (1904-1991), whose work has never been presented as a comprehensive whole in the Czech Republic.
The opening of the Irena Blühová’s Social Reportage exhibition will take place in June, presenting the diversity of the photographer’s work through a wide selection of images, bringing closer the unknown aspects of her work and opening a discussion on the nature of (interwar) social documentary. Considering the variety of genres that the artist was involved in during her lifetime, the exhibition will offer a multi-layered reportage of the society that Blühová viewed from different positions – as a left-wing idealist, amateur photographer, progressive-oriented student, cultural documentarian and committed artist.
In her socially critical work, Blüh calls for solidarity, and it is precisely this call that the graphic artist Claudia Schramke, who has been shaping the visual identity of the prestigious Berlinale film festival for several years, responds to with her intervention in the exhibition. Claudia spent several months visiting soup kitchens for people in need in Bratislava, Prague and Berlin to capture the act of helping and supporting each other in a reportage-like manner. Her colourful reportage drawings refer not only to Irena Blühová’s way of working, but especially to her message to the next generation: „Change the world further and do it better than we did.“
The brochure for the exhibition can be found here. / German version can be found here.
Read the essays accompanying the exhibition here. / German version can be found here.
Artists: Irena Blühová, Claudia Schramke
Curators: Valéria Kršiaková (Slovak design museum), David Bláha
Architecture: Mike Ma
Digital prints: Jan Maštera
Analogue copy: Evgenii Smirnov
Production: Pavel Matěj
Technical production: Jakub Tulinger
This exhibition is produced in cooperation with the Slovak Design Centre and with the support of the Czech-German Future Fund. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation supported the accompanying programmes, texts and sheets for children. The Fotograf Gallery project is implemented with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and supported by a grant from the City of Prague in 2024 in the amount of 700 000 CZK.
