From children to politics: Photographer Dagmar Hochová’s retrospective opens in Prague
A major retrospective of Dagmar Hochová opened this week at Prague City Gallery’s House of Photography. It presents not only her celebrated photographs of children from the 1950s and 60s, but also scenes from pivotal moments in Czech history, such as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, as well as everyday life.
Born in 1926, Dagmar Hochová studied at the State Graphic School before continuing at Prague’s renowned Film and TV School, FAMU. She became known in the 1950s and 60s for her sensitive portrayals of children’s lives, but as the exhibition’s curator Jiří Pátek points out, her interests and themes went far beyond that.
After her death in 2012, the photography department of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, led by Mr. Pátek, began processing her extensive estate, which contained an extraordinary 130,000 frames. The work took twelve years to complete, and according to Mr. Pátek, it was both a challenge and a joy:
“The key part of it was the archive of negatives by Dagmar Hochová, which ultimately became the central key to interpreting her work. Because once you have access to an archive of negatives, it is as if the whole life and work of the photographer lies open in front of you. You see the personal matters, the relationships, the themes she photographed—it all comes into view.”
In 2024, part of this collection was presented at the Moravian Gallery in Brno. That exhibition, like the new, expanded version now on display in Prague, sought to move beyond the long-standing label of Hochová as merely a “children’s photographer” and to highlight the breadth of her social documentary work.
“Beginning in the 1970s, her style shifted more toward what is called social documentary. She started focusing on difficult, often painful subjects—taking photos in institutions for children with mental disabilities, in retirement homes, and she documented the work of nuns caring for people in such institutions. All these places were deliberately pushed to the margins, hidden from the public eye, so they wouldn’t disrupt the regime’s ‘positive image.’”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hochová turned her lens on politics. She photographed the Civic Forum during its formation in 1989 and, as an MP for the movement in the early 1990s, produced a unique documentary series about parliamentary life—both in the chamber and behind the scenes. That part of the archive was digitized in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary History, says Mr. Pátek:
“The historians identified, for example, which parliamentary sessions are shown in specific photographs—what day, which people were present, and so on. So the site serves both the general public, who can revisit what Czech political life looked like in the early 1990s, and researchers, for whom it’s a valuable resource.”
The archive can be explored online on the Moravian Gallery in Brno’s website
The exhibition, entitled simply Dagmar Hochová, will run at the House of Photography until January 4, 2026.
