Although Václav Chochola (1923 - 2005) did not devote himself exclusively to theatre photography as his main field of creative activity, his carefully managed archive contains many artistically and historically unique works. Chochola started out as a sports photographer, but soon expanded his professional scope into the field of art. As a theatre photographer, he had been working since the early 1940s and managed to capture the intensity and uniqueness of a fleeting moment in his images. Chochol's theatre photographs are mainly focused on portraits, in which he subtly and precisely captures the essence of creative personalities such as important actors, but also directors, dancers and choreographers (Jan Werich, Jiří Voskovec, Ladislav Pešek, Karel Höger, Jiřina Šejbalová, Miloš Kopecký, Vlastimil Brodský, E. F. Burian, Alfréd Radok, Laurette Hrdinová, Sasha Makhov and many others). The pictures from the productions of the National Theatre, the Vinohrady Theatre, the S. K. Neumann Theatre, the Theatre Behind the Gate and the generational Větrník are also remarkable and impressive. Completely unique artistic documents are the shots from the theatre backstage, where the photographer captured not only the actors in their dressing rooms during make-up and concentration on the role, but also from workshops, painting rooms, depositories and similar spaces with a specific atmosphere. The publication was created in collaboration with Blanka and Marek Chochol (Václav Chochol Archive) and many of the photographs were discovered and digitised for the purpose of this publication. The Czech Theatre Photography edition was founded in 2020 and follows several years of research that IDU carried out and culminated in a representative exhibition entitled Czech Theatre Photography 1859-2017 at the Municipal House in Prague in spring 2018. It included a book of the same name, which won the Divadelní noviny award for publication of the year.
