THE BACKSTAGE OF HORSE RACES

For several years now, together with other photographers and curators, I have been selecting the best Czech press photograph of the month for Czech Press Photo. We receive the images from the organisers without the names of the authors being provided. However, with some photographs, I can usually guess the photographer’s identity at first glance, because they have a distinctive style, even though the images may have been taken at very different events. These are photographs by Roman Vondrouš, one of today’s most accomplished and successful Czech photojournalists. They are not, however, his freelance work, but the result of his regular work as a photojournalist for the Czech News Agency. Here, too, Vondrouš strives to apply an inventive approach to the greatest possible extent, making thoughtful use of bold colours, creative lighting, and unconventional compositions. For his work as an agency photographer, he won first prize in the Sports category at the World Press Photo competition in 2013, as well as numerous awards at Czech Press Photo (including the main Photograph of the Year prize twice), Pictures of the Year International, and the AIPS Sport Media Awards. In addition, however, Roman Vondrouš is also deeply engaged in creating his own extensive portfolios, produced outside his work commissioned by ČTK. These include, for example, the series Chataři a chalupáři (Cottagers and Cottage Owners), Myslivecký lov (Hunting), Fragmenty metropole (Fragments of the Metropolis), Městské imaginace (Urban Imaginations), Noční kluby (Nightclubs), Masopust (Carnival), Havana Cars, and Erotické plesy (Erotic Balls), the latter exhibited under the title Žhavé plesy (Hot Balls) as part of the Month of Photography at the Central European House of Photography. The titles alone indicate the wide range of subjects that interest him. There is, however, one subject to which he has devoted the greatest amount of time and effort: horse racing. This is understandable, as he comes from Pardubice, the home of the most famous Czech horse race, the Velká pardubická. Early in his career, his role model was Vladimír David, who photographed more than fifty editions of the Velká pardubická and created the books Od startu do cíle (From Start to Finish, 1974) and Taxis a ti druzí (Taxis and the Others, 1987). It was David who sparked his interest in horse racing. Roman Vondrouš began photographing horse races intensively in 2000. Gradually, he became thoroughly acquainted with the principles of horse racing, learned what to expect from particular horses and jockeys, and became familiar with the Pardubice racecourse down to the smallest detail. He knew from which positions and at which angles he could obtain the best shots, and when and where the most dramatic scenes were likely to occur. He began to create exceptionally dynamic, expressive images, making excellent use of the stylistic possibilities of black-and-white photography. He showed the extreme difficulty of the legendary Taxis ditch, where so many horses and riders have come to grief; photographed horses in mid-air from striking angles; captured riders losing their balance or falling from their horses; showed the symbiosis between horses and humans; and created visually impressive images in which it is sometimes difficult to discern where the horse’s body ends and the jockey’s body begins. Many of his photographs had already gone beyond the boundaries of traditional reportage photography, becoming emotionally powerful images of the world of horse racing. After 2013, he also began to make imaginative use of colour in his photographs of horse races. For many years now, he has photographed not only in Pardubice, but also at racecourses in Chuchle, Prague, Karlovy Vary, Most, and elsewhere. In addition to photographing the races themselves, in 2017 he began systematically documenting what goes on behind the scenes: jockeys and trainers preparing for the race, bettors, and, above all, spectators. He was particularly drawn to the races in Karlovy Vary, attended by members of various aristocratic families from the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and other countries. For them, horse racing is primarily an opportunity for social gatherings, to show off daring outfits and hats that would not look out of place even at the famous Royal Ascot races, and to have uninhibited fun. In the ever-expanding series The Backstage of Horse Races, Roman Vondrouš began to photograph not only these aristocratic women and men, but also many other ostentatiously dressed visitors, whose desire to show off and boast was often intertwined with a sense of humour. He portrays them with ironic detachment, emphasising their bizarre and absurd aspects and highlighting contrasts between social roles through deliberate exaggeration. He depicts ladies wearing hats shaped like horse heads or huge artificial lemons, gentlemen in morning coats racing wooden horses, ladies eating hot dogs while wearing gloves, and a boy riding an artificial horse in the opposite direction to the real jockeys on real horses. Many of these situations appear to have been carefully arranged, but Vondrouš does not stage anything in this series. As he himself says: “It bothers me when a photographer draws attention to himself and manipulates people. I like bizarre situations, but I don’t want to sensationalise them; I don’t want them to look cheap.” Vondrouš portrays the people in his photographs with humour, but he does not mock them. He does not engage in overt social criticism; rather, he is a keen hunter of visual paradoxes and uncanny moments. He is able to capture these in his photographs with maximum artistic impact, eliminating incidental motifs and emphasising small but significant details. His truly masterful use of colour and light plays an important role in this. Roman Vondrouš is drawn to contrasts between bright light and deep shadows, as well as between vivid warm colours, especially red and yellow, and vivid cool colours, especially blue and green. Often, a single warm and a single cool colour are enough to create an effective contrast. The saturation of the colours is further enhanced by the combination of daylight with the harsh light of an electronic flash. The photographs from The Backstage of Horse Races thus move away from a straightforward reportage depiction of reality towards markedly stylised, yet still realistic, images. Taken as a whole, they create a subjective vision of the particular world of horse racing, in which sport, money, social representation, fashion, tradition, and entertainment come together. This vision would not have been possible without the author’s intimate knowledge of this environment, his patience in returning to the same places, and his ability to continually discover new motifs. Roman Vondrouš has an excellent grasp of both the history and the present of photography, as he clearly demonstrated during his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral studies at the Institute of Creative Photography at the Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava, and continues to demonstrate through his teaching at the school and in his own work. It is therefore hardly surprising that he is well acquainted with the work of prominent representatives of subjectively conceived colour documentary photography, such as Joel Meyerowitz, Harry Gruyaert, Martin Parr, and Alex Webb. He himself acknowledges that some of them have inspired his work. At the same time, however, he has developed a distinctive style of his own, which he applies superbly both in his agency work and in his independent creative practice. The Backstage of Horse Races series is an excellent example of this. Vladimír Birgus