Photographer Dita Pepe is one of the prominent figures of contemporary Czech photography. She gained particular attention with her series Self-Portraits, which has been featured at major exhibitions and received numerous awards. The Self-Portraits series has been an integral part of her work for several years. As an intense exploration, it develops not only themes of interpersonal and family relationships but also the position of an individual in society and the crucial issue of personal freedom of choice, whose consequences are reflected in one’s lifestyle. The artist actively intervenes in the image, becoming a decisive and meaningful tool, a means of reading its content.
In her subsequent series (Young Ladies, Intimacy, Love Yourself), staged photography through Dita Pepe’s lens becomes both a narrative of profound women’s stories and a sociological probe, as well as an opportunity to understand oneself and find one’s anchorage in life and intimacy. Remarkable is Dita’s will and effort to understand and empathize with the life story of the portrayed person. While she cannot become an authentic part of that person, her ability to find universality in particular details creates an extraordinarily intense whole that becomes impossible to ignore.
An inseparable part of the exhibition project are not only the personal testimonies of the portrayed but also the specific space, which is unusual for photographic exhibitions.
The exhibition Dita Pepe is accompanied by the monograph Love Yourself, created in collaboration with Bára Baronová and graphic designer Milan Nedvěd. The book was published by the wo-men publishing house in cooperation with the Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava.

Jiří Jůza

Translated with the help of GPT chat.

Curators: Dita Pepe, Jiří Jůza