“My family and I spent the summer of 1968 in Slovakia. I listened to [Radio] Free Europe and reckoned I had to go back to Prague. I came in time, before 21 August. Because I lived on Red Hill [Czech: ‘Červený vrch’ in Prague-Vokovice - trans.] I had a first-hand view of the Soviet soldiers as they were drawing near. And being the young fool that I was, I went up to the Castle to join them. I took pictures with a big camera, a Praktisix with a big telephoto lens, and the Russians didn’t like that, of course. They stuffed the barrels of their guns into my belly and: ‘Davay plyonku!’ When you’ve got loaded guns stuck in your belly, it’s really not easy. So I gave them the film. Then I went to the [building of the] central committee. I took a few pictures there, and then I set off to Vinohrady. I managed to snap some shots there that became quite well known. The most famous, and in my opinion the best one shows Vinohrady in flames, a Soviet tank with exploding ammunition cars behind it and a boy running in front of the tank holding a radio set. It’s symbolic that we only had our bare hands and the radio. After university, when I was serving in the army, I was with a tank regiment. So when the fuel tanks were smashed and set on fire, the tanks could explode, so that was really unpleasant. I’m not trying to excuse the young Russians, they shouldn’t have started shooting, but they couldn’t take the enormous pressure. In my opinion they had no idea where they were, why they were here. That’s why dreadful things happened, the commanders messed up. The Russians even shot at the [National] Museum because they mixed it up with Radio House. I was there as well, and I still have a small cartridge from there. When I was taking the pictures, some people pulled me down to the ground so I wouldn’t cop it. I was glad I survived. I think the first three hours in Vinohrady were very emotional. That was a real occupation, it was really ugly during the fight for the Radio House.”
“When I took pictures in August 1969, it was very difficult to do so because the soldiers and Public Security [police] officers cordoned off the street. So you could only take shots, say, from a tram. I talked with the tram driver, and he opened a window for me, and I took the picture through that. Then we stood below the ramp and started to sing the anthem. And that’s when they rushed us. It was a massacre. When they’re mashing you up and spraying tear gas at you, that’s really not good. And to top it all, I still had a small camera and some films in my pocket. I thought to myself: ‘I’m in trouble.’ They herded us together and prepared to take us away in an Anton [a nickname for the Robur LO 2500 minibus used by the Czechoslovak police - trans.]. The ones they took were locked up and interrogated for two to fourteen days. I couldn’t see properly because I was bleeding. And suddenly a tall bloke leans on me like this and says: ‘What are you doing here?’ I looked at him, and it occurred to me it might be my friend from last year [a policeman whom he had met while photographing in August 1968 - ed.]. It was probably him. I don’t know, I can’t swear to it. I just told him: ‘I was on my way to some friends, I’m here by chance.’ ‘Then go!’ He turned round and stood so that the commander, who was ordering us around and bullying us, wouldn’t see me disappear. I managed to cross the street together with one other person. They took the rest. I ran into the first house, where they let me clean myself up. Because if someone’d walk along the street with blood stains, or with some other cause for suspicion, the cops would nab him. I went home clean, and I immediately set about developing the films. So that was 1969.”
[After publishing a new edition of Jan Amos Komenský (Comenius): Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart in the BRD in 1972] “...they sent me two copies before Christmas. One was for me and one for Professor Patočka. They were supposed to send more copies, but I didn’t get them. So I wrote to them that they hadn’t come and that they should send some more. That they’d been lost. So they sent me some more. They were lost again. And instead of that, I received an invitation to the ‘Tile House’ in Letná [the State Security station - ed.], where they had them. And they started a big interrogation. They wanted to prove to me that it was subversive literature. And I refuted that. The book is written in Old Czech and Old German. It was edited by Professor Patočka and Professor Schaller, who were experts on Komenský and on philology. They didn’t care about that, they had their own explanation. Say for the photograph for when the text expresses that it is beautiful to set out somewhere and not reach it. For this wonderful, I chose a photo of a snow-filled Letná Field. I made my own footprints on it, and so that you couldn’t go any further forward, there was a barbed-wire fence there. Their interpretation was: ‘This is our border, and emigrants are fleeing across the border.’ We went through the book like that, but sometimes I just couldn’t explain it to them. ‘One does this, and another does that. But all of these things are of little use and of little appropriacy for such grand exhibition.’ This text was accompanied by a photo of two men in a May Day parade, playing Chess and carrying flags at the same time. It was an awful situation. It got even more extreme: ‘This is a war, and these are Soviet soldiers - you’re talking about our friends?’ And I said: ‘Whose are soldiers with expressions. And how do you know they are Russian soldiers? I can’t tell.’ ‘You can tell that according to the helmets.’ ‘Or here, and we’ll be including this in the report, this is [Prague-]Vinohrady in flames.’ I explained: ‘Yes, Vinohrady in flames. I cropped it so that it wouldn’t be possible to identify either the time or the place of origin. And it’s about war being dreadful, that many people die in wars. Do you like that, comrades?’ The interrogation lasted eight hours, and they gently insinuated that they can use one sheet of paper, which had a red stripe on it, which meant [taking me into] custody. Luckily they didn’t do that. But I wasn’t able to talk my way through everything. The book was sold abroad in the end. They forbade me from corresponding with Professor Schaller in any way. I only managed to write to him that I was at the faculty and that I wasn’t allowed to write to him any more. And he replied that he was also in trouble, that his correspondence was monitored.”
Jiří Všetečka, a prominent figure in Czech photography, was born on 12 October 1937 in Prague. After graduating from La Guard Grammar School in 1955, he was accepted to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague; he completed his degree in 1960 and stayed at the faculty as a lecturer. In 1958 he began to take an intense interest in photography. Autumn 1962, during the Caribbean Crisis, saw him serving with a tank regiment in Žatec. He became a candidate of the Union of Czech Fine Artists in 1964 and a member in 1968. In the years 1968 and 1969 he photographed and participated in demonstrations in Prague against the August invasion of Warsaw Pact armies; he attended Jan Palach‘s funeral. In 1977 he was appointed Docent of Photography at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). In 1989 he photographed and took part in the demonstrations in Prague. In the years 2000 and 2001 he presided over the Union of Czech Photographers. He has exhibited at dozens of photographic exhibitions both at home and abroad. He is the author of a score of books and has contributed his photographs to many other publications. He has worked with various magazines, film makers, theatres, and other cultural and media organisations. Died on November, the 9th, 2016.
Czechoslovakian Fine Artists Union: Pavel Dias, Karel Neubert, Sláva Štochl, Jiří Všetečka, Bohumil Straka, Josef Prosek, Zdeněk Martinovský, sedící: Jindřich Brok, Josef Ehm, Petr Zora, Fred Kramer
Czechoslovakian Fine Artists Union: Pavel Dias, Karel Neubert, Sláva Štochl, Jiří Všetečka, Bohumil Straka, Josef Prosek, Zdeněk Martinovský, sedící: Jindřich Brok, Josef Ehm, Petr Zora, Fred Kramer
