Dias

Pavel Dias’s work forms one of the touchstones of Czech journalistic and documentary photography. Dias began taking photographs at a juncture in time when the stiffness of form and content serving the predominant ideology was giving way to live photography capturing people and real life. Dias was one of the main representatives in this country of classical humanist photography, an approach that characterises his work to this day. In his vision and depiction of the world Dias is always empathetic. He experiences the world and the sublunary heroes of his photographs to the full. At the same time, he miraculously manages to maintain the necessary distance and detachment and does not lose his ability to see and accentuate quiddities and comment on events. He himself is a part of his pictures. In each of his photos we feel his personal presence and participation. Despite the transformations going on in the surrounding world and developments taking place in society, again and again he returns to his original humanistic motto: to explain humankind to itself, to see life in everything. The human race and the life it leads remains at the core of Dias’s photographs. In this respect Dias’s photographs are exceptional: despite their documentary or journalistic essence they are universal, timeless commentaries on human existence.