PAVEL KOSEK - INFORMEL

Thanks to the efforts of young artists who were constantly facing difficulties in presenting their work, the artistic life in Zlín - then called Gottwaldov – in the 1960s was quite lively and highly inspirational for the young photographer Pavel Kosek. František Nikl, Bedřich Baroš, Svatopluk Slovenčík, the Šutera brothers, and Ladislav Včelař were the leading personalities of the visual art scene of what was then the capital of socialist shoemaking, the former seat of the Baťa company. Among these artists, Kosek was the closest with Bedřich Baroš. In the early years of his photographic career, young Kosek succumbed to the temptations of Czech post-war abstraction – art informel.

At that time, I was finishing my studies at FAMU in Prague and my visits of Zlín were more and more frequent. I was visiting to see my mom, but also to work here: on the films of my older fellow directors from FAMU, who usually debuted with their graduation films in Zlín, and at the local educational centre, managed by Jaroslav Ulehla, who later worked as a producer at the Zlín Film Studios at Kudlov. (Although Zlín was not called Zlín at that time, I never stopped calling it otherwise.) It was at this educational centre that I met a young colleague Pavel Kosek, with whom I became a close friend much later.

At the time when Kosek was working at the Kudlov Film Studios, we did not meet, but we knew well about each other. Pavel Kosek studied photography at FAMU in Prague (1964-1971) and, unlike me, who stayed in Prague, he returned back home to Zlín after graduating. While he was studying at FAMU, we were not in touch. Kosek was at that time interested in staged figurative photography and nudes, and it seemed to me that his work was close to that of another FAME student, Pavel Hudec Ahasver, a Prague photographer and also a FAMU photography graduate.
In the years 1971-1973, Kosek was involved with theatre photography, among others photographing for Laterna Magica. After completing his studies (1972) he also worked at the Gallery of Southeast Moravia, indirectly preceding another significant Zlín photographer, Rudolf Červenka, a former camera assistant from the Kudlov Studios, an expert on photography of design artefacts and documentation of visual art, mainly paintings and sculptures. The group of Zlín photographers also included two Kosek’s contemporaries, Jan Regal and Jan Sovička. Together, they represented a powerful informal group of talented authors with markedly differing interests and work. They all significantly continued the tradition started by the photographers of the publicity photographic department of the Baťa company (and later the Svit company), photographing filmmakers in the Kudlov Studios, and highly crafted private photographers of pre-war Zlín (Eviják, Sovička, Husička).

As already mentioned, the Zlín native Kosek remained faithful to his home town and region in which he lived throughout his life. For the larger part of his professional career, he was self-employed and since 1973 (till the end of his life) worked as a freelance photographer and designer. He photographed his town and his region, and worked in advertising and publicity, making mostly studio pictures. Apart from abstract photography, he significantly focused on figural studies of nudes, especially in the early years of his career.

What is very important is that he created a significant picture of the urban landscape, of his hometown. By excellently covering Zlín (and the region of Wallachia) in all its forms and over a long period of time, he joined the ranks of this pedagogical models, such as Professor Karel Plicka, once an employee of the Zlín Film Studios, whom Kosek personally met and who was one of the three main founders of the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, and Professor Jaroslav Bouček, another big and important figure of the Zlín Film Studios and also one of the founders of FAMU. Plicka’s excellent photographs of the architecture of Prague together with Bojanovský‘s photographs of his hometown of Kolín laid the foundation for the school of architectural photography. However, from the architectural and historical point of view, Zlín was an entirely different type of town. Kosek understood this very well and became an important representative of the photographic history of this town, continuing the work of his predecessors: Josef Sudek, whose photos are characterized by traditional views of the factory and the town, Jan Lukas, who delivered a dynamic image of the town‘s life, and the Zlín filmmaker Antonín Horák, who used to capture Zlín usually in the rain. Lukasovský‘s imagery, based on the square format, was adopted in the 1960s and 1970s by Kosek’s generational companion and friend Rudolf Červenka. The power of Kosek‘s photographs lies in his great professionalism, his education and talent, perseverance and the immense time span during which he devoted himself to the theme. Excellent are his lyrical black and white views of the city and the countryside. The work of Pavel Kosek was significantly upgraded in both quality and quantity with the advent of digital photography, a technology which he adopted in a masterly way.
 
Kosek‘s photographs constitute a personal image of Zlín and its surroundings which enriched (along with photographs of other beautiful regions of the world) the cultural life of the town of Zlín in many exhibitions and in numerous publications. He possessed a tremendous register of artistic means of expression and organizational skills. He established extraordinary inspirational friendships with the poet Václav Renč and the designer Professor Pavel Škarka.
He did not photograph his region or his country only, but also created exquisite collections of photographs from France and California, which he visited after his daughter Petra linked the Kosek family with the family of Tin (Martin) Hamid, the son of Alexander Hamid Hackenschmied, once an important avant-garde filmmaker and photographer working at the FAB (Baťa Film Studios), later an important representative of American independent film.
Besides the aforementioned free photographic work, Kosek worked as an advertising photographer, just like his colleague painters and graphic artists worked in promotion and advertising. He never underestimated this work, giving it maximum attention and high professionalism. In his home at Cigánov in Zlín, where he worked and lived with his family, he founded DIOS, a small exhibition space, in which, together with his daughter Petra Hamid Kosková, he presented the photographs of Alexander Hackenschmied, Jan Lukas, Dagmar Hochová, Antonín Horák, Pavel Dias, Karel Cudlín and others.

One more very important factor of Kosek‘s life needs to be mentioned. He was one of the first teachers in a new department which later became the Institute of Advertising and Marketing Communications of the Brno University of Technology, based in Zlín. The institute was the core of the emerging Faculty of Multimedia Communications, which later became part of Tomas Bata University. At the time this history began, we became firmly connected both as colleagues and as friends. I was appointed the first head of the newly-founded Department of Advertising Photography and Pavel Kosek was my colleague, with whom we intensely started to build a new educational institution, a new school. With great enthusiasm and commitment, we were putting together the equipment that was needed for teaching and with our own hands we built the first classroom with a studio and a photographic darkroom. Pavel was a selfless and tireless colleague whom I could totally rely on, and I also made friends with his family. Our workplace was completely ready before the start of the academic year and even included an exhibition of important Czech classic photographers, as the first of all newly founded studios.
It was a wonderful time. Before our important start, at the beginning of the academic year, Pavel had health as well as relationship problems with the management and he gave up his further participation in the common work. My memory of Pavel Kosek, a hardworking, talented and very reliable man, who had an open and loving heart, will forever remain one of my beautiful experiences from Zlín.