Josef Provazník, official photographer of the Ministry of Post and Telegraph Offices
Exhibition of Contemporary Photographs
November 25th, 2009 to February 21st, 2010, Postal Museum, Prague 1, Nové mlýny 2
Open daily except Mondays and public holidays, from 9am to 12am and from 1pm to 5pm
The idea to organize an exhibition of photographs by Josef Provazník, the official photographer of the Ministry of Post and Telegraph Offices, was the result of a happy coincidence. "We knew the pictures. But no one knew the author. They were a part of the collection called Photographic Archives of Post Offices. Some of them bore the abbreviation Prov. (for Provazník), but to say the truth, no one cared about it for a long time," PhDr. Jan Kramář, author of the exhibition, said.
An interesting life story started to reveal to Jan Kramář when, preparing the publication '90 Years of the Postal Museum', he went through materials in the Czech National Archives and found work reports and other documentation from trips undertaken by Josef Provazník, the only official photographer of the Ministry of Post and Telegraph Offices in the pre-war Czechoslovakia. It was the story of an officer whose job included trips across Bohemia and Moravia in order to get top quality photographs that could promote the postal administration and the ministry. Mr. Kramář found entries in the archives, including detailed data about certain photographs, matching the documentation and description of those photographs held in the Postal Museum. This gave birth to the idea of an exhibition.
The displayed contemporary photographs show more than post offices, postmen and other postal themes. They offer a unique view of the landscape and monuments of the pre-war Czechoslovakia. Some of the pictures were likely made by Josef Provazník as a postal officer working in Subcarpathian Ruthenia in 1924.
The exhibition is coming with the traditional commemorative handstamp and commemorative postcard. The latter features the photograph of a postman in front of Prague Castle, made by Josef Provazník on November 26th, 1935. The commemorative handstamp will be available at a commemorative counter at the Postal Museum, on Saturday, November 28th, 2009, from 9am to 3pm.
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