VACLAV HAVEL-TOMKI NĚMEC, Photographs, 2001

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In 2001, I self-published the book Václav Havel – Tomki Němec, Photographs, featuring 88 black-and-white photographs.
It was my first hands-on experience of how a book is made. I wanted it to fit “into a pocket,” inspired by the legendary Photo Poche series. The design was simple and restrained, yet—by the standards of the time—very well printed. The book included a foreword by political scientist and historian Jacques Rupnik. The edition sold out quickly; the print run was not large. Today, collectors write to me offering unbelievable sums for this little book—one I no longer own myself.

But I do have a story connected to it, involving Václav Havel.

At the very beginning of 1990, Václav Havel offered that we address each other informally. I was so thrown off that I couldn’t imagine it at all and, with some awkwardly stammered excuse, politely declined. After a while, “Mr. Václav” pressed the matter again—using words I won’t repeat here, so you don’t think he was crude 🙂—after I refused a second time. To get out of it with nothing worse than a sweaty back (all the way down), I said I would gladly accept the informal address once I published a book about him.

Originally, that was meant to happen by the end of 1990, as I had first discussed with colleagues from the student agency Radost, founded during the revolution by my former classmates from FAMU’s photography department—but that’s another story.

In the end, I published the book myself in 2001, long after I was no longer the president’s personal photographer. I brought the freshly printed book straight from the press to Václav Havel at the Open Air festival—also known as the Trutnov Woodstock—an event he regularly attended from its early years, travelling from his nearby cottage at Hrádeček, where he usually stayed at the time.

He was sitting backstage with Ivan Martin Jirous and friends. I greeted them and mumbled something like, “So… now we can finally address each other informally.” He smiled—that gentle, familiar smile of his. What he said exactly, I no longer remember; I’d be making it up. I was so overwhelmed that my very next sentence ended with, “Mr. President.” I never quite got fully used to the informal address, but I learned it—carefully, lightly. Sometimes, without an audience, it felt right.

Unfortunately, I was no longer able to show him the later, more extensive book I published in 2016.

Václav Havel forever!

Václav Havel – Tomki Němec, Photographs, 2001 (English edition)

• 88 photographs / 196 pages

• Introduction: Jacques Rupnik

• Notes to photographs: Jiří Oberfalzer, Tomki Němec

• Translation: Derek Paton

• Graphic design: Jan Zachariáš

• Printed by: Daniel

• Published by: Tomki Němec

• Design: Jan Zachariáš / Atelijeur Půda

• Size: 125 × 190 mm / 500 g

• ISBN: 80-238-6371-1

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