Iwan Baan: Prague Diary - výstava v CAMP

Center, periphery, and the landscape along the Vltava River. It is a hot August, the sidewalks are scorching, the air becomes heavy. The city's pulse carries a slow rhythm, the atmosphere is drowsy. Prague does not feel like a big city, nor does it struggle with a significant influx of tourists. Photographer Iwan Baan walks through its streets for the first time. He is driven by curiosity and a desire to explore. He listens to the sounds of the city, trying to understand the language it speaks. He perceives its past, character, not overlooking its distinctive landmarks nor forgotten corners. He sensitively responds to its diversity and contradictions. He visually narrates its unexceptional yet extraordinary story.
The poetic image of the city presented by Iwan Baan carries a sense of neglect and abandonment. It is not based on picturesque allure but on the reality that must be confronted. Seven days with a camera in hand, on foot, by bike, from above – as is typical for him. On the roads, in constant motion, yet it seems that time has stopped in his photographs. Miniature human figures in frozen poses call for attention. The architecture nearby is captured almost incidentally.
The title of the exhibition "Iwan Baan: Prague Diary" derives from the caption "A diary of travels with the iPhone" on the author's Instagram account. The idea of endless wandering through the city from one end to the other, recorded in the form of a visual diary, fit into the Prague concept of the exhibition from the initial idea for a joint project. The exhibition is ideologically conceived as an imagined urban pilgrimage, linearly permeated by four thematic layers – first contact with the city, center, periphery, and natural scenery. Visitors can intuitively pass through them, symbolically getting lost in various nooks, discovering new places and returning to the notoriously familiar ones.
The exhibition presents the personality of Iwan Baan as an artist, author, and one of the most respected documentary architects, who gained wider recognition through his impressive aerial photography. These images are dedicated to an audiovisual section of the exhibition and are concentrated on a large wall. Here, traffic intersections, urban development, or the historical center stand out, which have been photographed with such intensity for the first time. In contrast, a niche in the rear part of the exhibition reveals almost all the photographs Iwan Baan took in Prague. Raw, unedited, random.
Photography, as such, is then emphasized throughout the entire exhibition space. Its forms of presentation deliberately vary. The goal was to bring forward not only the realities it captures but to emphasize its significance as a medium.