VÁCLAV HAVEL-TOMKI NĚMEC PHOTOGRAPHS | English Edition

Product detailed description

My Story – How It All Began

In 1989, I was 26 years old. After the fall of the Berlin Wall—the symbol of a world divided between East and West—the revolutionary wave reached Prague as well. In less than two months, a playwright, writer, dissident, prisoner of conscience, and former brewery worker, Václav Havel, was elected president of a state that had terrorized its people for forty years in the name of communism and “bright tomorrows.”

Through a series of coincidences, chance encounters, and the luck of being in the right place at the right time, I became his personal photographer. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. He was a generation older. I was an unfinished photographer—without proper equipment, experience, money, and with family responsibilities. But none of that mattered. It was an adventure that comes only once in a lifetime. It was a time when everything seemed possible.

I traveled and flew around the world as what was probably the youngest personal photographer of a head of state anywhere. I witnessed extraordinary moments and met people I had previously known only from newspapers or television. I photographed massive crowds in public squares as well as deeply intimate moments of a president who was never a typical president.

Everything in this world is fleeting. Photography remains—as an imprint of time, a reminder that refuses to let us forget.

Years later, I returned to my archive and selected both well-known and newly discovered images. With the distance of a quarter-century, it is astonishing to realize what an extraordinary era I had the fortune to live and photograph—an era of hope and positive energy. I shared a part of my life with an exceptional human being: Václav Havel.

This book is a testimony to that time, to him, to me—to all of us. I hope it brings you joy and evokes emotions and memories of a truly unique period in history.

The book was published in October 2016, on the occasion of what would have been Václav Havel’s 80th birthday and the fifth anniversary of his passing.

Book Specifications

• 288 pages of photographs

• A unique photographic book seen through the eyes of a personal photographer

• Printed on Swedish Arctic Ivory paper, 150 g

• Texts by Daniel Anýž and Petr Třešňák

• Design by Jan Zachariáš / Atelijeur Půda

• Available in Czech or English

• Format: 240 × 280 mm

• ISBN: 978-80-260-9632-0

Interesting facts:

• Selected from 67,622 frames shot on 35mm film

• Includes previously unpublished photographs

• Also features iconic images, such as:

  • Václav Havel surprised by a wave on the Atlantic coast (World Press Photo 1991)

  • The first meeting with The Rolling Stones

  • The legendary speech in the U.S. Congress

  • Václav Havel walking along a sandy beach in Portugal

More information:
👉 https://www.knihahavel.cz/
👉 https://www.havelbook.com/

The book can be ordered exclusively through my e-shop.
Shipping to a pick-up point is included in the price.