Upcoming . Libuše Jarcovjáková : T-Club – Just Like in Paradise

Early 1980s, Prague is experiencing years of normalization, everything is grey, dehumanized.  The colourful, cheerful community of the T-Club bar is only one door away. The world, where being “gay” means stigma, diagnosis, and often open hostility, remains outside the door. Here you are at home, among your own, in a newly created family of your own choosing.

The exhibition presents 40 photos from the legendary T-Club taken by Libuše Jarcovjáková between 1983–1985. T-Club was a place where the weight of the communist regime fell and melted away in casual fun that often lasted until morning. The series is a strong message about freedom in unfreedom, so valid even today. Libuše sensitively documents regulars, stray visitors, her friends, herself and life in the club. The photographs were taken on special occasions, with the Security Police omnipresent, ready to attack those who had to hide their orientation from their families, or colleagues. The series reminds us of hope and joy felt in difficult times, when it is necessary to live here and now, regardless of the boundaries society often places around us.

The Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková (*1952, Prague, Czechoslovakia) has been documenting her life since the 1970s and capturing her feelings in powerful images. She became known in 2017 with her monograph Černé roky (“Black Years”, exhibition of the same name at the Czech Center Berlin in 2018) and internationally in 2019 with the exhibition and book Evokativ, which were presented at Les Rencontres d’Arles and made it into the top 10 of the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards. In 2024, the National Gallery in Prague is showing her first major retrospective.

The documentary film I’m Not Everything I Want to Be, about her life and art, premiered at the Berlinale in 2024. The film will have its official release in Berlin on February 27, 2025 with the distribution company Salzgeber.