The opening will taken place on Tuesday 21 April at 5 p.m.

This exhibition presents black-and-white photographs from the cycle Salt of the Earth by the Czech architect and photographer Milan Pitlach (1943–2021), who emigrated to Germany in 1981 and lived there for the rest of his life. Pitlach began to take an interest in photography in 1969, when he used photographs as a form of diary entry during a working visit to London. After returning home, he continued to explore the medium, capturing the atmosphere of Czechoslovak society during the era of “normalization”, the political crackdown that followed the 1968 invasion of the country by Warsaw Pact troops. It was during this period that Pitlach created a series of photographs documenting the industrial and social context of Ostrava.

Curator: Jaroslav Michna
Text: Jaroslav Michna
Translation: Christopher Hopkinson
Graphic design: Katarína Jamrišková
Promotion: Jana Malášek Šrubařová, Magdaléna Staňková