Born September 7, 1941, is a Czech photographer and one of the most important figures in Czech documentary photography, alongside Jindřich Štreit. His work focuses primarily on urban life in the industrial Ostrava region.

Early Life and Education

Kolář was born in 1941 in Ostrava, then part of Czechoslovakia. His father was a documentary filmmaker and the city’s principal photographer, operating his own photographic studio. Kolář began taking photographs in 1953 and studied the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. From 1960 to 1964, he trained as a teacher at the Pedagogical Institute in Ostrava.

Life and Work

After completing his studies, Kolář taught at an elementary school and, from the mid-1960s, devoted himself increasingly to photography. In 1964, he held his first solo exhibition, and in 1967 he formed a close friendship with photography theorist Anna Fárová and her husband, painter Libor Fára.

Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in October 1968, Kolář emigrated to Canada. There, he worked in molybdenum mines and nickel smelters in Manitoba before returning to photography. Between 1971 and 1973, he documented shopping malls in Montreal, exhibiting this work at the Optica Gallery.

In 1973, Kolář returned to Czechoslovakia via Paris and London. As a former emigrant, he was subjected to repeated police interrogations and was prevented from working openly as a photographer during the period of political “normalization.” He instead worked as a laborer at the Nová Huť steelworks and later as a stage technician at the Petr Bezruč Theatre, while secretly photographing everyday life in the Ostrava region. He resumed work as a freelance photographer in 1985 and, in 1991, received the Mother Jones International Photography Award.

Critics have noted that Kolář’s work reveals ethical decline, emotional emptiness, and social tension, while simultaneously uncovering poetic and unexpected moments within ordinary life. His photographs allow for multiple interpretations and align him more closely with the subjective documentary approach of photographers such as Robert Frank than with traditional humanistic photojournalism. After returning from Canada, his work became increasingly personal, marked by unconventional compositions and an interest in themes such as alienation, frustration, consumerism, and the individual’s relationship to social systems.

After the Velvet Revolution, Kolář began teaching documentary photography at FAMU in Prague in 1994 and was appointed associate professor in 2000. He has also lectured and traveled extensively in the United States. Kolář continues to be recognized for his profound and critical examination of everyday life under shifting social and political conditions.

Reference List

Viktor Kolář. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved January 19, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Kolář