DESCRIPTION:
VÁCLAV HAVEL - Photographs by Tomki Nemec
Softcover, 195 pages, 88 duotone illustrations. Introduction by Jacques Rupnik
Tomki Nemec, Czech Republic, ISBN 80-238-6371-1
Dimensions (mm): 190 (h) x 125 (w)

DETAILS:
This publication comprises 88 black-and-white photographs providing testimony about the life of President Václav Havel both in private and in his official role as a politician. Tomki Nemec devoted himself to taking photographs of Havel from the time of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia to the break-up of the state and the birth of an independent Czech Republic and Slovakia. The photographs have been conceived as powerful, timeless statements, which has made them much sought-after by collectors and highly valued by the international press. In 1991, for example, one photograph was awarded a prize in the prestigious WORLD PRESS PHOTO competition, and was included in an exhibition that travelled to every continent.
Nemec worked for several years in close proximity to Havel at a time when this popular politician was making his mark in history. Havel, widely considered the foremost banned and imprisoned playwright-dissident of Communist Czechoslovakia, helped, with his words and his actions, to bring about the fall of a detested régime. He then stood at the head of an emerging democracy and went from being a citizen-dissident, who almost the day before had been in prison, to being a politician-president recognized and respected throughout the democratic world.