Václav Havel – Tomki Němec, Photographs | Photography Book

Product detailed description

About the Book

The photography book Václav Havel – Tomki Němec, Photographs offers an exceptional view of Václav Havel and the years following the Velvet Revolution through the eyes of his personal photographer.

Across 288 pages, it presents well-known and previously unpublished photographs selected from my extensive archive of 67,622 frames of 35 mm film.

The book captures major historical events, foreign visits, encounters with world-famous figures, and informal and private moments from the president's life.

It was independently published in October 2016, to mark what would have been Václav Havel's 80th birthday and the fifth anniversary of his death.

Technical Specifications

• Publication year: 2016
• Number of pages: 288
• Format: 240 × 280 mm
• Weight: approximately 2 kg
• Paper: Arctic Ivory, 150 g/m²
• Photographer: Tomki Němec
• Texts: Daniel Anýž, Petr Třešňák
• Graphic design: Jan Zachariáš / Atelijeur Půda
• Czech edition ISBN: 978-80-260-9632-0
• English edition ISBN: 978-80-260-9633-7
• Publisher: Tomki Němec, independently published

My Story – How It All Began

In 1989, I was 26 years old.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutionary wave reached Prague as well. Less than two months later, a playwright, writer, dissident and prisoner of conscience named Václav Havel became the country's president.

Through a combination of circumstances, coincidences 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 a photographer who hadn't finished his studies, with little proper equipment, experience or money, and a family to support.

But none of that mattered.

It was an adventure you might experience only once in a lifetime. A time when it seemed that absolutely anything was possible.

I travelled the world as a photographer accompanying a head of state, meeting famous personalities I had previously known only from newspapers or television. I photographed crowds in town squares, as well as intimate moments in the life of a president who was never really a typical president.

Everything in this world is fleeting. But photography remains an imprint of time.

Years later, I returned to my archive, went through tens of thousands of negatives, and selected both familiar and newly discovered photographs.

The book is a testimony to an extraordinary time, to Václav Havel, to myself, but in a way, to all of us.

I hope it brings you joy and evokes memories of a time full of hope and positive energy.