Aperture, No. 152. Fall 1998. Crossing Borders: Contemporary Czech and Slovak Photography.

Aperture, 1998. Edited by Peggy Real. Stiff wraps. Very good with bump at bottom of spine.  Photographers include Josef Sudek, Jan Malý, Bohdan Holomíček, Pavel Pecha, Viktor Kolář, František Drtikol, Jaromir Funke, Judita Csǎderová, Vasil Stanko, Pavel Mára, Tono Stano, Ivan Pinkava, Pavel Bǎnka, Kamil Varga, Zdeněk Lhoták, Josef Koudelka, Peter ŽupnikAntonin Kratochvil, Jan Pohribný, et al.  History of Czech and Slovak photography by Antonin Dufek. Also illustrated essay by Ken Jacobs on Jack Smith and interview by Maureen Clark with Peter Galassi about Alexander Rodchenko. 80 pages.  Summary:

Aperture No. 152, published in Fall 1998, examines contemporary photography from the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the years following the end of communism and the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia. The issue focuses on how photographers from both nations grapple with questions of identity, history, memory, and transformation during a period of profound political and social change.

The magazine features a diverse group of Czech and Slovak photographers whose work reflects both shared cultural roots and emerging national distinctions. Through documentary, staged, conceptual, and experimental approaches, the photographs explore everyday life, the lingering presence of the past, and the uncertainties of a newly open society. Many of the images address themes of displacement, surveillance, private versus public life, and the tension between tradition and modernization, revealing how personal experience intersects with broader historical forces.

Essays and critical texts in the issue provide context for the region’s photographic traditions, tracing influences from avant-garde and surrealist movements to postwar documentary practices. The contributors emphasize how decades of political restriction shaped a visual language marked by irony, metaphor, and subtle resistance. At the same time, the issue highlights how increased access to international art networks in the 1990s encouraged experimentation and cross-cultural exchange.

Crossing Borders underscores the significance of Czech and Slovak photography as a vital part of contemporary European visual culture. By presenting these works to an international audience, Aperture No. 152 positions the featured photographers not as regional curiosities, but as artists engaging in global conversations about identity, power, and the meaning of freedom. The issue ultimately portrays photography as a medium through which societies in transition can examine their past while imagining new possibilities for the future.