Czech artist Jitka Hanzlová (born in 1958) explores in her various series of photographs the individual, his surroundings, and the landscape in which she lives. In so doing, she often approaches the sites of her childhood, an aspect that she describes in the following terms. “The path that I take is a path back to look into the future.”

In 1982 Jitka Hanzlová came to Germany, studied visual communication with main focus photography at University Essen (1987-1994), in 1993 she was awarded the Dr. Otto-Steinert-Preis by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie, in 1995 she received the DG BANK Frankfurt scholarship, in 2003 the Grand Prix Arles, and in 2007 the Paris Photo Prize for Contemporary Photography. Her work has been shown in numerous international individual exhibitions.

Jitka Hanzlova has sought to explore her experiences through photography, producing a body of work at once poetic and truthful. Hanzlová’s photography is in constant pursuit of the relationship between the individual and the context in which he or she lives. It scrutinizes the ways in which home and surroundings indelibly shape identity. Emerging from her experience of two different political systems, her work is a profound meditation on European identity in a post-Cold War world.

This survey searches the patters of belonging that have marked the entire oeuvre of Jitka Hanzlová. It will be the very first comprehensive presentation of Hanzlová’s work in her native country, covering three decades of her artistic practice and including a new series of photographs, conceived especially for the exhibition in the National Gallery Prague.