Czech pupils from our partner school visit Gera:Czech pupils from our partner school visit Gera

For the second time this year, pupils from our partner school in Jihlava visited Gera. This visit also focussed on participation in lessons and excursions. This time, two photographers and 4 students from the commercial academy were visiting.

We would like to take an excursion into the world of young photographers. The exchange with the Czech school already existed before the 2019 Erasmus mobility programme. The work assignment "Gera in autumn" initiated by the partner school was almost impossible to implement due to the late summer in mid-October. This did not deter creative minds. As usual, the photo enthusiasts discovered lots of interesting things in ordinary places. Anyone who has travelled with photographers knows how to stop and linger. It makes you curious. That's how the idea of sharing a photographer's perspective with us during the city trip to Leipzig came about. David and Roman, two budding photographers from Jihlava, as their teachers reported, used their equipment to transform their hotel room into a professional photo studio during their stay in Gera. Neither of them ever tired of taking pictures. Buildings, people and current affairs aroused their curiosity. David usually focusses on animal photography. Due to the abundance of motifs of urban architecture, he didn't go on his planned solo trip to Leipzig Zoo. He wants to make time for it later in Leipzig.

David Blàha has already won a national photography competition in the Czech Republic. His award-winning photograph does not leave us unmoved, the motif shows an unobtrusive detail of contemporary animal husbandry that leaves the viewer pondering. The paw of a gibbon, a small ape, leans almost gently and timidly against a fence, telling us that a tree trunk would be more appropriate for it in the wild. As here and in the photographs from Leipzig, it is clear that the photographer is not interested in beauty, composition and light, but in capturing momentary impressions and moods. The photographer Eliott Erwitt summarised it more clearly: "For me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I've realised that it has little to do with how things look, but much more with the way you see them."

Text: K. Prüfer