CGD

"All of a sudden, motherhood became the reality lived by most women from my circle." This was Hana Knížová's situation four years ago, when she began working on the cycle Mothers and later turned it into a natural part of her editorial for the Stella McCartney Kids brand. The "momma trend" was far from being trendy then and Knížová realized that the history of photography, let alone the fashion magazines, had not hitherto offered too many examples of how to accommodate to pregnancy and motherhood effortlessly and easily, as to an utterly natural and commonplace thing. For this is exactly how she features it in the editorial: she shoots her characters at home, with all the breastfeeding, exercising, dancing... With the first moments experienced by two people trying to familiarize with each other; two people who are connected by one of the strongest bonds ever, but can at the same time be personalities who would never seek the other one voluntarily. Knížová became attracted to the special situations of individuals who had found themselves in often neither chosen nor planned relationships a long time ago. These can include families as well as the phenomenon of twins - after all, a portrait of a twin couple earned her the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, awarded by the British National Portrait Gallery, in 2013. However, she is also fascinated by the facilities where human coexistence is characteristic of proximity and presence at a single place, but not necessarily of solidarity and cohesion. In her first notable author's cycle, Hamr na Jezeře (Hammer am See), she captured the faces of teenagers growing up in foster care, portrayed residents of a dormitory for the socially disadvantaged in Oakland, California, and shot pupils attending the Líbeznice elementary school for the Projektil33 exhibition. All the above-mentioned environments and constellations tend to strip people off their singularity and uniqueness, to label them as inmates, wards, pupils or identical siblings. Knížová kicks against this; she resists generalization and treats everyone as an individual, and her acute eye never fails to separate the unique beauty out of those in front of her camera. Portrait is her domain and her strongest point. It is especially because she always travels beyond the mask of a social role: people in her photographs cease to be models, mothers, siblings, losers or pupils, becoming if not necessarily themselves, then definitely their better, more beautiful selves.

Pavel Turek