Josef Chroust

„I have a slightly different opinion. I guess that some people just asked for all that bad attitude, beating and such. I was shooting the Nýrská Dam in Šumava Mountains. It was forbidden to take photos there but I missed the sign. And out of the blue, two men in plain clothes and in an unmarked car. They pulled over, showed me their badges that they are the Secret Police and that they got a tip that there is someone suspicious of espionage moving around the area. It was close to the Western border. They want to know where I was lodged. They believed me but they wanted to check so they drove me to the hotel where I was staying and where they verified it. They drove me back and I was glad because otherwise I would need to walk with my bag and tripod. They sat me in the car and talked to me normally, we chatted, they didn't bully me, they did not denigrate me, they did not curse. Nothing like that.”

“To what extent were your photographs self-censored “I did not care about it. On the contrary. Sometimes, my work was published even in Rudé Právo [Red Law, the official Communist Party daily] and there I encountered a man who would look at my pictures and he would to say: 'Finally, a normal photograph, I'm also fed up with all those miners and combine thresher drivers, even those people must be fed up with that. And you have normal human beings, not those blackened by soot.' And so I found that even in Rudé Právo, there were normal people. “Did you make photographs of which you would have known that they would not pass? Was there any self-censorship?” “Oh no. Imagine, RP was less scared than Lidová demokracie [Popular Democracy] which was a catholic paper. They were scared like hell.” “Could you give an example of such a photograph?” “A picture with a church in the background. Rudé Právo dared to print pictures with a church, Lidová demokracie would not dare. So that they wouldn't clamp down on them. They were afraid but they would print my work from time to time as well.”

“Then I shot Marta Kubišová. She never took the name of her husband, he was called Němec, I think, and he was a film director. He was shooting a film with her. It was after the 1968 occupation but she could still sing and film. She had already had her makeup removed and she stood alone by the Staroměstská [Old Town] tower, leaning against it. I approached her and asked her whether I could take some pictures. She said that yes, and that I can also publish them. And then suddenly, her personal photographer ran there and he was so angry at me that I thought he would want to fight. How did I dare to shoot such a famous and illustrious person. She was very kind and told him to stop it, that she had allowed me to. I won't say his name but I know who he was.”

“You mean whether I photographed something that they [editors] wouldn't like and accept for print? Some criticism? I mostly criticised the economy – I wrote short stories. Or about voting – how people are thinking about their private matters and when someone who is talking says, Raise your hand if you agree, all of them raise their hand even though they are thinking about football and other things. They published this one in Dikobraz [Porcupine; satirical weekly]. And I found out why – I was an external collaborator. They [the employed writers] knew that these things were happening, they would be able to write an article but they were afraid to because they could be fired. When they accepted such a work from an independent contractor, they could publish it. We were making fun [of the regime]. In all three factories where I had worked, everyone had talked openly about what was going on.”

"I made a film and it was so good that they accepted it in the TV. There was an assigned person who looked at the films offered by amateur filmmakers. He liked it so much that he recommended it for airing. But he said that it would sit for too long in his department and that he will send it to the newsroom, that they will show it in the news. It was a criticism of those petty patents, improvements which were more of worseners. I made a funny little animated film. They liked it and aired it and wanted me to make more features for the news. I couldn't believe my ears. I was not vouched for, I had no clearance, I was not in the [Communist] Party and they still assigned such a job to me."