Finalist 2023, Markéta Luskačová

“From the past to the present, Markéta Luskačová has maintained the accuracy of her gaze and her common thread, the human.”

Photography has the wonderful power of preserving memory. I have always photographed people and places that I loved, valued and wanted to be remembered,” explains Markéta Luskačová. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1944, she left the country in the mid-1970s for Great Britain, where she lived for most of her life. This has never prevented her from maintaining links with her homeland, where she continues to travel regularly to carry out various series, such as the one on children produced in the Czech Republic from 1998 to 2014. This work echoes Citizen 2000, a series of documentaries on the lives of twenty children made for Channel 4 between 1986 and 2000. A photographer of reality, Markéta Luskačová has been working on long-term documentaries since she began in 1964. Her credo: to dig deep furrows around subjects that are dear to her. ‘Pilgrims in Slovakia’, made from 1964, when she was a sociology student, to 1971, is a case in point. A delicate project at a time when religion was outlawed by the Communist regimes. In the same way that she has been unfailingly consistent on other themes, such as “London markets” and “Carnivals in the Czech Republic”, which she has continued to cover since 1975, she has never stopped photographing throughout the decades: “It has given a rhythm to my life, a purpose and even dignity. I’ve always taken photos and I still do today”. Essentially in black and white, and recognisable by his sharp handwriting, his work also includes works in colour where his mastery of composition is the same. From the past to the present, Markéta Luskačová has maintained the accuracy of her gaze and her common thread, the human.

by Sophie Bernard

Read Biography

Markéta Luskačová is a Czech-born photographer who has spent much of her life living and working in the UK. Frequently drawn to marginalized people, she is particularly well known for her work in Slovak villages, but also in the markets of London’s East End.

Born in Prague in 1944, she grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Communist regime. In 1963, she stumbled upon a group of pilgrims visiting the town of Levoča and became determined to document these cultural and religious traditions threatened with erasure. She studied sociology at Charles University, graduating in 1967 with a thesis entitled Pilgrimages in Slovakia. She then studied photography at the FAMU film and television school in Prague.

The Pilgrims series of photographs brought Markéta international recognition. She traveled to remote areas of Slovakia, focusing in particular on the village of Šumiac, where life has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, having escaped the collectivism imposed on the rest of the country by the Communist government. She depicted the life, rituals and religion of these enduring village communities. As pilgrimages are in direct contradiction with state ideology, Markéta wanted to record this way of life, fearing that it would soon be eradicated.
These photos were first exhibited in Prague in 1971 at the Visual Arts Gallery. Creative Camera editor Colin Osman, visiting London, saw the exhibition and published the photographs, bringing Markéta’s work to the world’s attention. The collection was also later exhibited in London, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in 1983.
In 1971, Markéta married the poet Franz H. Wurm, who was born in Prague but had British citizenship. In 1970-1972, Markéta photographed theatrical productions at Theatre Behind the Gate, for which she was the official photographer. But this brought her into conflict with the Communist Party, which banned the theater in 1972. She asked the state authorities to allow her to visit her husband in England, and finally emigrated in 1975.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Communist censors banned Markéta’s work in Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, she never ceased to regard Czechoslovakia as her homeland. “I always saw my life abroad as a kind of palliative that stretched out to become a considerable part of my life,” she declared.

In London, Markéta found new inspiration for her work in the city’s markets, particularly Brick Lane and Spitalfields. She shopped in these markets out of necessity, but also found them a rich and varied subject on which to focus. When her son, Matthew, was born in 1977, she would walk him through the streets in his baby carriage and take photos of the people and places she encountered. She continued to photograph these neighborhoods and their inhabitants for decades, producing a long series. “I couldn’t think of a better place in London to comment on the very impossibility of human existence,” she says. In 1991, Markéta organized a solo show at the Whitechapel Gallery, presenting a selection of her photographs taken in East End markets. Shortly after the “Velvet Revolution” restored democracy to Czechoslovakia in late 1989, Markéta was invited to mount an exhibition at the Levoča Museum. In the summer of 1990, her Pilgrims series was exhibited there. She then worked in the Czech Republic photographing the Vietnamese community, disabled children and winter carnivals, while continuing to shoot in the UK, focusing on children’s photography in addition to her ongoing work on London street markets.

Interviewed by The Guardian in 2012, Markéta said, “In the Czech language, the verb to photograph means to immortalize. When I came to Britain in 1975, I was shocked to learn that in English, the equivalent is to shoot. Even after 37 years here, I find this notion rather foreign.

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