Ivan Prokop

* 1954

  • " ... and then I was backstage, and suddenly Havel came in with the case, and so I quickly took some pictures, Honza Šibík was standing next to me, we were taking pictures together, our shots are basically very similar, it was just a moment, there was also Vojta Lindaur backstage, and Vláďa Merta, and it was... such a... almost as if it was a party - today it would be a party, back then it was an incredible moment. Then suddenly Ivan Hofman started to play, they turned him off... I mean before that... she pulled Havel on the stage, it was completely... or she said that he, Havel... that she was going to sing for him... it was completely... a very powerful moment..."

  • "First of all, it came as a shock. Even though we have been talking about it for the last year or so, that there might be some repression and or even some bans, even though we all kept saying that it was legal and that we were not doing anything illegal, when it happened we were totally unprepared and we didn't know how to deal with it. And then... we started meeting people who were trying to help us or who tried to influence the situation, people from the Charter, from the underground, and we were looking for a way out. There were some radical views that we had to join the underground and fight, and then there were some views that were the exact opposite, that we should build on the fact that the society was legal, that there was nothing illegal going on, and that the whole thing was nonsense and a mistake. The fact is that we had a lot of support from the musicians and the whole cultural wave from abroad, which helped the result of our trial. In the end the truth was on our side and we even got some money for the conviction, not much, just some postage money... so I think they had it badly prepared..."

  • "How was the Bulletin, which was the crucial magazine of the Jazz Section in the '70s, '80s, made? - it was all printed and then it was hand-made into books. And those were some of the most beautiful moments in my life, because we would all gather in that little house around the big table. There were stacks of pages, we would go around that table and we would take those pages and organize them into magazines and then we would take those magazines to the bookbindery where they would glue them together. That took many, many hours during which music was playing, we were talking about music and art while working. Those were the best moments I could have had in my life... or some of the best moments..."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 07.12.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:59:56
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 28.02.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 01:23:46
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Freedom is hard work, but it’s worth it

Ivan Prokop in 2022
Ivan Prokop in 2022
photo: Post Bellum

Ivan Prokop was born on June 9, 1954 in Prague into a Jewish family. However, he did not know about his Jewish background for a long time; both his parents lost their families during the war and refused to pass on this traumatic experience. Ivan’s brother Michal, who is from his father’s first marriage and is eight years older than him, played an important formative role in his life. He opened him the door to the world of music, which Ivan Prokop never left. From the age of fifteen he began to take photographs, and later, thanks to his apprenticeship as a production graphic designer, he acquired the necessary technical knowledge of working with photography. He worked as a graphic designer in the Polygrafia printing house and later in the Panorama printing house, and many interesting and representative books, record covers and posters passed through his hands. However, his life is firmly linked to the Jazz Section, as he devoted all his energy to its activities in the field of music, visual arts and literature. He also witnessed the gradual increase in repression against the activities of the Section and even the arrests of the members of the Section when the pressure was at its peak. Later he himself was interrogated by the StB (State Security) in connection with the imprisonment of Petr Cibulka. As a photographer, he is behind many reports from the music world, and participated in key concerts of the time, such as the 1987 festival in Lipnice, where Václav Havel performed, or the Joan Baez concert two years later, which also produced the legendary photograph of Václav Havel carrying the American singer-songwriter’s guitar. In 1991, he began working at Bonton, where many important audio storages and album covers were created under his direction. In 2005 he founded his own selective publishing house Animal Music with Petr Ostrouchov. Ivan Prokop has always been and still is a tireless organizer of cultural events, holding exhibitions at Café Kampus and founding the internationally recognized Jazz World Photo competition. In 2022 he lived in Prague.