Karel Steiner

* 1953

  • “Then I decided that I would not continue to study Law even though I considered it. Instead, I started to study at art school in New York l where I studied advertising photography for two years. This brings us to 1978. I lived eight years in New York, I and my friend from school opened our first atelier there and we did promotional photos, mainly still lives. Everything was all right, everything worked well until the time I fell in love. It may sound a bit strange to say it like this but it is true. I found an American girlfriend who grew up in France and she moved to France after one year of our relationship and I could choose to follow her or stay in New York. I hesitated a little, I said that I would think about it. I returned to Europe a year later. I arrived in France so that we could be together.”

  • „I returned twice or three times to visit my parents in the 1980s. It was always very pleasant but also strange. Everyone was… I don´t want to say… afraid. The atmosphere was quite gloomy compared to the present when everyone is smiling, there are advertisements and lights everywhere. Back then, when I arrived, it seemed to me that everything was “switched off.” Everything was dark and gloomy, I would compare it to North Korea. My parents came to see me in the 1970s and I returned to Prague two or three times. So I could see how it worked here, it was gloomy, or how to express it.”

  • „I had the possibility to study, to emigrate. I came to the United States. My aunt, my father´s cousin invited me. My parents spent almost the entire year deciding if they should send me abroad or if I should stay. I was invited already in 1968 after the occupation. I and my parents think that the relatives wanted to do a good deed but did not go as far as to invite the whole family, they invited just me. I travelled alone to Washington in September 1969. It was quite easy but I was very lonely. I did not see my mother for seven and my father for eight years. First, I finished grammar school, a high school in Washington. Then I lived in the State of Indiana and it was interesting to come from the East coast to a farm in the middle of nowhere. There were huge fields of corn and soybeans.”

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    Praha, 18.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:35:13
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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American photographer of Czech origin in Paris

At Hamilton College
At Hamilton College
zdroj: witness´s archive

Photographer Karel Steiner was born on 6 July 1953 to Jewish parents Walter and Věra, who had survived the holocaust. He grew up in Karlín in Prague, he went to the elementary school at Lyčkovo Square and was supposed to continue studying. After the invasion in August 1968, his father´s relatives offered his parents that they would enable Karel to study in the USA. His parents agreed with it after a long decision-making process and Karel Steiner flew to the United States in September 1969. He studied at high school in the capital Washington D.C. and he studied in the State of Indiana for one year. After Secondary-school leaving exam, he graduated in Political Sciences at Hamilton College in New York State. He did not want to be a clerk or a diplomat and he also graduated from a practical school majoring in Photography. He worked as an advertising photographer in Manhattan for several years. He and his future wife left for Paris in the middle of the 1980s. With a break of a few years in Prague (1992-1995), he still lives in the suburbs of Paris today. Nowadays (2021) he is not so much involved in advertising photography but teaches new photography students at the Paris College of Art.