As the “first photographer” of Prague, Kutná Hora, Pilsen, Lednice and other places Abdreas Groll has become an almost obligatory part of the literature review and encyclopedic literature. His views of the Powder Tower, St. Barbara’s Cathedral in Kutná Hora and photographs of furniture from Rožmberk Castle are today among the most famous photographs that came into being in our country in the middle of the 19th century.
Since Groll was a son of a gardener and an assistant cook, social circumstances were not favorable for him, but thanks to his ambition, desire to experiment and deepening his knowledge of photographic technology, which was significantly enhanced by his eight years’ work in the chemical laboratory of the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna (albeit in a somewhat inferior function of a laboratory servant), he managed to overcome this barrier and, in 1853, at forty years of age he started his own photography business.
This exhibition presents not only the remarkable story of Andreas Groll (1812–1872), who worked his way up from being a domestic servant to a member of the photographic elite of his day, but also the story of the beginnings of Central European photography as such. A large portion of the photographs, mostly from the collection of the IAH CAS, are now being presented to the public for the first time.
The exhibition is organized by Prague City Gallery in collaboration with the Wien Museum, Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Photoinstitut Bonartes.
Petra Trnková (Curator of the Collection of Photographs in IAH CAS) and Monika Faber (Director of the Photoinstitut Bonartes in Vienna), curators of the exhibition in Prague and in Vienna as well (Wien Museum, 21.10.2015–10.1.2016), are the authors of the first Groll's monography.
Prague City Gallery
House of Photography, Revoluční 1006/5, Prague 1
16 February – 8 May 2016
Tuesday – Sunday 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., Thursday 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.