Helena Lukas on photographer dad Jan: "He said, I want you to live in a free world"
Helena Lukas, daughter of the major Czech photographer Jan Lukas, escaped to the West with her family in the mid-1960s. In New York the Lukases were part of a Czech cultural elite in exile that included such names as Jiří Voskovec, Ferdinand Peroutka and Alexander Hackenschmied. Helena Lukas is currently in Czechia preparing an exhibition of her father’s work that will open in the town of Dobrovice next weekend.
Your dad, Jan Lukas, was born in 1915. What kind of photography was he doing initially, in the First Republic?
“When he started at the age of 12 – that’s when he received his first camera as a gift – his first photographs are from the hometown of his father.
“I have those photographs, they’re from 1927, and even the first photograph is beautiful. It’s of a square with a man walking on just one leg, so it’s interesting.
“Then he started to photograph nature and women. His photographs were successful; they were on the covers of Czech magazines when he was 17, and even foreign magazines, like Picture Post and some German and Austrian magazines.
“His photographs were on the covers of magazines when he was 17.”
“So he felt like he was doing the right thing. His father was against it. He wanted him to be a businessman, so he had to go to a business school.
“After the business school his father gave him more freedom and he went to Vienna to an art school.
“Then his first real job, which his father did approve of, was at Baťa film studios; that was when he was about 21.”
And at the Baťa studios in Zlín, he was not only a photographer but a cameraman too?
“He was actually hired as a cameraman, because that’s what they needed. So he learned it, and liked it, but not as much as still photography.
“So he was doing both things and after two years… well, the occupation came and that was all dismissed.”
I know he took photos of the funeral of T.G. Masaryk. Did he also photograph Masaryk when he was alive?
“Yes. I have two or three portraits of Masaryk. One of them will be hanging in this upcoming exhibition.
“He didn’t know him personally, of course, but he did photograph him on a couple of occasions.”
When the war came your dad would have been in his 20s. Was he able to continue working?
“He was able to continue working because he always worked basically for himself.
“The first real job he had at the Zlín film studios, but then when the war came… I’m not sure, he made some living doing stills for films, because filmmaking was still going on in Prague, so he was a stills photographer – odd jobs like that.”
The Nazis used Barrandov [studios in Prague], right?
“Yes, they used it, so he did some work. But he, as usual, worked a lot for himself, hiding it away, hoping for the future to get better.
“And he also started working on his eventual first book, Země a lidé, The Land and its People, which was very safe in the sense that nobody was bothered by him taking pictures of villages and fields.
“So that’s what he continued. He always gave himself assignments and continued with those.”
I guess perhaps his best-known photograph originated during the war, a picture he took of a young Jewish girl called Vendulka Voglová in 1943. Could you please tell us the story of that picture?
“Yes. The family were family friends for years before that. And when they were called to report and to be removed they called him the night before. They didn’t have too much notice but they said, Tomorrow we’ve got to go – can you come and take a picture of us and say goodbye?
“So he did. And he said it was emotionally quite drastic, seeing these people that were intimate and yet there was really nothing much he could do.
“He took three pictures that evening. Of Vendulka, the portrait that’s famous, and also of the whole family sitting on their suitcases. I will exhibit this picture now that she doesn’t mind anymore, because she passed away in 2017 and did give her permission.
“It was a very, very emotional experience. He hid the film in the cellar of our building, in clothes, because he didn’t even want to develop it.”
It was too dangerous?
“Right, then the image would be around. He didn’t develop the film but hid it in the cellar in clothes. And after the war he found it – it wasn’t ruined – and he developed it.”
And this girl Vendulka ended up in America and you knew her there?
“Exactly. I knew her. I knew of her of course my whole childhood, because we talked about her and our parents wrote to each other.
“They left after 1948, because as Jewish people they were able to emigrate; they moved to Canada and then to the United States and we exchanged Christmas letters and things like that.
“When we did escape and landed in New York, the first summer was really rough – the weather in New York was awful, to me; humid – I’d never experienced humidity like that.
“And she was so kind that she invited me, because everybody else started to work – I was only 16 – and she invited me to come to her house in Ohio to save me from being so lonely and hot.
“That was the first time I met her and I realised that she was only 20 years older than me, she was only 36, so her memories of what happened to her were right there with her.
“But to me of course she seemed old, because I was only 16. Only now do I realise how time works in a very short kind of a way… to her everything still had to be present.
“She had three children, eventually four children, and I helped her with the kids. I was supposed to learn English that summer but we kept speaking Czech [laughs].
“She was wonderful.”
When the Communist regime were installed here in Prague, how did that affect your dad’s life? Did he just continue doing his work? I know for example he photographed Gottwald.
“Not in person. I think he did photograph him on a podium somewhere. But personally, no, he did not.
“He was one of those people who were not going to have anything to do with the Communists. He did not try to play the game, like, I’m not against you.
“He was clearly against. He had friends – some were Communist, a lot were anti-Communist.
“I remember him telling me how one of his friends, I don’t know which one, told him, Don’t worry, we’re not going to hang you – you’re going to be safe.
“One of his Communist friends told him, Don’t worry, we’re not going to hang you.”
“Even knowing my father’s attitudes, he said, We’re not going to hang you. And I thought, This is dreadful, a dreadful thing to say.
“So I was growing up hearing all kinds of things like that. We had friends, two boys, whose mother was locked up, for years.
“And I just thought, Is that going to happen to me? To us?
“It was not easy. It was no fun in that respect. In many other ways we had lots of fun.”
I read a profile of your dad that said that he photographed Stalin. Is that true?
“No, no way. He did go to Moscow, because he was sent to photograph Moscow, and I believe he went to the Mausoleum, but Stalin was already gone out of it – there was only Lenin there.
“No. No way.”
It seemed unlikely but I had to ask.
“Did you read it somewhere?”
Yes. I’ll send it to you.
“I would like to see that. It makes no sense, because he didn’t visit Moscow until ’59 and Stalin was gone.
“He rejoiced when Stalin died. There was another moral dilemma he was trying to explain to me.
“I remember when Gottwald and Stalin died and how there was happiness in my family.
“My dad said, Listen, there are distinctions. We never wish for someone’s death, but there are moments when certain people are better for us dead than alive [laughs] – and Stalin is one of those, because he killed so many people.
“So he was trying to teach these difficult distinctions [laughs].”
Your dad seems to have had a really rich and varied career. For example in 1958 his images were shown at the Laterna magica theatre at the Expo in Brussels, the World’s Fair.
“Yes. That was surprising, that they picked him to do it. He even got a gold medal of some sort from the government.
“Yes, that was one of the first trips… that was amazing, because we expected him to come back with all kinds of gifts, which he did [laughs].”
What were the circumstances of your family’s departure from communist Czechoslovakia in 1965?
“It was a complicated plan, long in the making. My mother wanted to leave right away in 1948, and my father said, No, don’t be silly – this is not going to last a long time.
“Then it was too late – you couldn’t do it as a whole family. And he was never going to split us up. Some people left thinking they could get the kids out later and he said we were never going to chance that.
“Some people left thinking they could get the kids out later and he said we were never going to chance that.”
“Anyway, in 1965 it was a complicated plan. Me and my dad went to Germany to visit relatives and my mother and my sister were going to go to Yugoslavia.
“We were going to meet in Yugoslavia and try it from there, because there was no Iron Curtain the way there was here in Czechoslovakia.
“So we did that, except my mother was called to whoever was in charge, who said, Your husband’s in Germany – you’re not leaving tomorrow for Yugoslavia, he’s got to come back first.
“So we came back. Then we had a second plan. They said, Now you can go to Yugoslavia, so they did. And me and my father left for Hungary – because he had a passport as an artist; that was the saving grace, that he had a real passport.
“And I was written in his passport, somehow, on a visa to go to the United States, the year before.
“Anyway, we went through Hungary, got into Yugoslavia, where I wasn’t supposed to be. But we had a fight with the Hungarians at the border and all of sudden they just let us go.
“We met my mother and sister. Then we waited for another family. And then we broke through the border between Italy and Yugoslavia.
“And luckily they weren’t shooting, they didn’t do anything to us, and the Italians, with open arms, took us in.”
What are your memories of the period leading up to this defection? Were you scared? Were you looking forward to it?
“Oh, talk about mixed feelings. We were in agreement that we did want to leave, because my sister had seen London the summer before and I had seen New York in the fall of ’64 – and that solidify that, yes, there is another world that is so much brighter, so much more exciting.
“And we agreed that we should try and we should leave.
“On the other hand, we had the best of friends, we had the best of times here – on a personal level – that it was hard.
“And we couldn’t say goodbye to anybody; not to our grandmother, not to our friends.
“So that was extremely hard. We left with a small suitcase, and that was it.”
Was your sister older or younger?
“She was younger. She knew a little bit more English, because she studied it. I knew nothing of English, and I’m still not great at it.
“Anyway, that was tough – because I went straight into 10th grade without any knowledge of English and oh yeah, I was suffering.”
And because your family left essentially with the clothes on your backs, a lot of your dad’s earlier work was lost?
“That was the biggest sadness, that we had to leave so much of his work behind.
“But he was the most optimistic person I ever met, I think: losses like that never seemed to bother him.
“He left hundreds of thousands of negatives from the First Republic.”
“He did make a collection, an important collection, and sent it off with a couple of friends, some to Vienna, some to London, some to Munich.
“So what was the most important to him, he did send out. And he figured, If we don’t succeed, we’ll just come back.
“But he left hundreds of thousands of negatives from the First Republic. Though he didn’t care about that work – he said, That was just pretty women and pretty pictures.
“He took his Prague Diary, which he was proud of, and some other things but then, you know, he started from scratch.”
How he find the adjustment to living in America, because he was moving to a whole new culture at the age of around 50?
“He was 51 when we arrived, which back then was, Yeah, he’s old. Now I’d be like, Come on [laughs].
“He felt kind of old, but he said he didn’t care, he said he did it mainly for us. Whether he succeeded or not wasn’t so important to him, but he said, I want you girls to grow up in a free world.
“That was his idea. And the culture shock to him was not that much at all, because he had so many Czech friends there.
“We started with that company: people that left before the war, in ’38, that left right after the war, so there was a huge Czech community that was very interesting and lots of fun.
“We met together very often. The American friendships started much slower, of course – that was not as natural as the Czech friends.”
Also, fortunately for him, he had a skill that was easily transferable to another culture.
“Yes. I would say actors or writers had it much more difficult than he did.”
Who were some of the people that he knew? I know, for example, he would hang out with Ferdinand Peroutka, the journalist, the actor Jiří Voskovec.
“Yes. Most of the Czech friends – who also helped us to emigrate to New York; they had to give a guarantee that we would not be a burden and so on – lived within a few blocks of us.
“It was the West Side, right by Central Park, and there was Voskovec on 89th St. We were on 86th St. Saša [Alexander] ‘Hammid’ Hackenschmied was on 89th… Voskovec was on 87th, I’m confusing it.
“But anyway all of these people lived really close. Also the Koldas [the family of production manager and actor Ladislav Kolda] lived very close by. Only Peroutka, he lived all the way out in Queens, but there the subway, so there was no problem.
“Yes, it was easy to meet up with them, and we did a lot.”
And he also photographed around that time the great American director Sidney Lumet?
“Because he was visiting Voskovec, there were some parties at Voskovec’s house…”
Whom he cast in the movie 12 Angry Men.
“Right, exactly, my favourite film. So he’s got photographs of him that I believe will be in the exhibition.”
Did you yourself spend much time with these people like Miloš Forman and so on?
“Not as much as my father, but yes, quite a bit.
“Actually my sister’s 18th or 19th birthday was celebrated on the roof of Saša Hackenschmied’s house and we have a wonderful photograph with Miloš Forman and some other directors.
“Yes, there were parties and get-togethers.”
Some of his best-known photographs also are of Václav Havel, when he visited New York in 1968 and was photographed by your dad in Central Park.
“That was a very special time, obviously, the spring of 1968. That’s when I, for the first time, really regretted and was like, Maybe we didn’t have to escape? Maybe we should have waited it out a few more years?
“Havel arrived and didn’t know anybody, so he went to a phone booth and looked up ‘Lukas’ and called my father up.”
“And that’s the time that Václav Havel managed to come to New York.
“His story was lovely – I’m proud of it – because he arrived and he didn’t know anybody, so he went to a phone booth, which back then still had the phone books, and looked up ‘Lukas’ and called my father up.
“So then my father just took him around and introduced him to everybody.”
They had known each other in Prague?
“Yes, my father photographed a lot at [theatre] Divadlo Na zábradlí, where Havel’s first play The Garden Party was performed.
“I remember watching it and my father taking pictures, so yes, he knew him back then when he was not that important [laughs].”
I also was reading that your father photographed three American presidents: Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan. What’s the background to those pictures?
“OK, Kennedy – that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but there is a photograph which will be exhibited, and that’s one of those lucky moments. As my father said, You always have to have your eyes ready.
“He was in Rome in 1963, June ’63, so very shortly before Kennedy’s death. He was sent there by Artia, the publishing house, which then sold books for export.
“So he’s in Rome and he hears kind of a commotion. He’s thinking, What’s going on? Click – and there is a car with Kennedy driving in it [laughs] – and he’s got it.
“That’s how he photographed him; he was not invited or anything like that.
“With Reagan it was a little bit more personal. He was invited to photograph certain occasions, parties and things, so yes, he got him. And the same with Richard Nixon.
“He photographed the Democratic and the Republican conventions in 1972 and that’s where he had, of course, even the other candidates.
“That was going to be for Life magazine, and with his luck it was all ready, it was pre-printed, he saw it, and then Life magazine folded.
“That’s one thing that did bother him [laughs].”
You also are a photographer. Was it kind of inevitable that you would enter the family business?
“No, I don’t think it was inevitable. I was not going to do it.
“I studied diplomacy, I was going to be a diplomat – and those plans changed because I had four children.
“So I gave up on diplomacy and was always interested in my father’s work; as a child I worked with him in the darkroom, he involved me in choosing pictures for his books, so I felt very much part of his work in that sense.
“Then when my children started to grow up and they didn’t need me as much, I returned to school and got a Master’s degree in photography.”
Do you feel an influence of your dad on your work?
“Of course I do, of course I do, but I am not like him at all.
“I always felt the influence like, I cannot be like him, I cannot be like him.
“I’m afraid of photographing people the way he did. He was a shy person yet it didn’t bother him to photograph people.
“I’m scared of bothering people, so I have a hard time with that and my photography is not that documentary. Unless I have a real project and I know I have the permission, then I do it.
“But otherwise, no! [laughs]”
Your dad had a long life and he lived to see the end of communism. He lived until the year 2006 and was 91. Did he return here much after ’89?
“He returned at least a few times, if it wasn’t three times – my memory is beginning to fade.
“He definitely came in, I would say, 1991. He visited FAMU and had a small exhibition; his prints were passed around, so he met with photographers then.
“And then he had a big exhibition in 1995 at Mánes. That was quite wonderful, because the amount of people that poured into Mánes – he was shocked and pleased; he didn’t think people would remember.”
And he also photographed Havel again around that time, in Prague of course.
“That was the same year, after or during the exhibition, Havel invited him to come to the Castle.
“My father took me along so I had that proud moment – it was incredible [laughs].”
Tell us more about it.
“It lasted about an hour and we walked through those long hallways until we were ushered into his office.
“Then we had a coffee with him and spent 45 minutes, photographed him and it was amazing.
“And that’s what we talked about, how life is amazing, the turns it takes [laughs].”
Do you spend much time in Czechia yourself these days?
“Actually quite a bit, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Well, it’s usually for work, to something about my father’s work, prepare exhibitions. Sometimes it’s just personal.
“I am drawn to coming back to Prague. To me it’s home, the most beautiful city. And I love being here.”
You’re currently in Prague working on a new exhibition of your father’s work called Two Lives. It’s going to be in Dobrovice, a small town in Central Bohemia. Why there? He’s not from there.
“He’s not from there, but there is a family connection. My grandmother’s excellent cook – back then you had cooks when you were better off – was this beautiful woman, Jiřina Čumpelíková.
“My father knew her from his teenage years and then she took care of us, his children, for a while. We kept in contact. We called her teta: aunty.
“And we spent summers in Dobrovice. And those were the best summers. That’s where we left from – we got the telegram there that we have to go to Prague to start that escape plan.
“That town is in my memory forever: friendships, first loves, that kind of stuff. So I cannot wait to go back.”
I’m sure you’re biased, but what do you think makes your dad a great photographer?
“Of course I am biased. I think it was his incredible interest in other people, in their stories, in the bigger picture, the history of the country, which is composed of little histories.
“And his interest was always there – he was always ready to record it, because it was important to him.”
Do you feel like your dad receives the respect that he deserves? It seems to me that he is acknowledged as a great, but maybe I feel that because I personally am an admirer of his work.
“I think it’s absolutely normal that older generations sometimes don’t get that much attention any more.
“I am actually surprised that he is remembered at all, because for 20 years he was not allowed to be mentioned.”
“It’s kind of inborn in young people to pay attention to themselves. It’s normal.
“So no, I am actually surprised that he is remembered at all, because for 20 years, from what I hear, he was not allowed to be mentioned. And if his pictures were published it would say somebody else’s name or ‘anonymous’ or whatever.
“So to me it’s amazing that he’s that well-known and acknowledged. No, I’m very happy.”
Jan Lukas: Dva životy (Two Lives)
Dobrovice Museum
Palackého nám. 2, Dobrovice
26.4.2025 – 29.5.2025
