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Summary for: Czech photographer Jindřich Štreit celebrates 80th birthday with Paris exhibitPhotographs made in northern France more than three decades ago will meet scenes from Czech village life in a new Paris exhibition celebrating documentary photographer Jindřich Štreit’s 80th birthday.
Humanity, opening Nov. 5 at the Czech Centre Paris, brings together work from both countries to explore everyday relationships, vulnerability and dignity. Many of the photographs will be shown publicly for the first time.
Running through Jan. 16, 2027, the exhibition forms part of the Photo Saint Germain and Photo Days festivals. Organizers describe it as Štreit’s first major retrospective in Paris, despite his long history of exhibiting in France.
Rediscovering photographs from Saint-Quentin
The exhibition will include approximately 70 images Štreit made during commissioned visits to Saint-Quentin in northern France between 1992 and 1994.
These will be presented alongside selections from his Czech series The Village Is a Global World and People of the Olomouc Region, photographed during the 1980s and 1990s.
The prints have been newly produced from the original negatives, allowing previously unseen material to enter a conversation with his better-known work.
Czech Centre Paris director Radka Ondráčková said Štreit could find tenderness even in deeply bleak scenes. She described his black-and-white photographs as showing humanity resisting pressures that seek to suppress it.
For the organizers, the title Humanity emphasizes that the exhibition concerns more than a record of particular places or periods. Its central subjects are the connections between people and the dignity they retain in difficult circumstances.
The show is curated by Photo Days founder Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais and photographer Štěpánka Stein, with contributions from Štěpánka Bieleszová of the Olomouc Museum of Art. Prague’s Galerie Teleport is a co-organizer.
A direct gaze, without humiliation
Štreit turned 80 on Sept. 5. The Paris exhibition follows a major anniversary presentation at the Olomouc Museum of Art, Out of Town!, which explored rare photographs from the former Sudetenland alongside his curatorial activities in Sovinec, where he lives.
Bieleszová said his approach avoids both false sentimentality and idealization. His subjects can appear tired, vulnerable, isolated or occasionally absurd, but are never stripped of their dignity.
“His gaze is direct, but never cruel,” she said.
De l’Ecotais placed Štreit alongside his contemporary Josef Koudelka among photographers who have developed a deeply individual view of human life and a body of work of exceptional strength.
His photographs are held by institutions including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Library of France. Last year, he received the Czech Photo lifetime achievement award.
The Czech Centre Paris exhibition offers a chance to revisit that career through an international pairing: Czech communities and a French city, photographed by an artist attentive to the everyday experiences that connect them.
