Dušan Šimánek

* 1948

  • "One of the last things I did, though it took five years – and they didn't like the name back then, is called the Herbarium for the 22nd Century. And it came about again by accident, that's, as I say, the stumbling - like with the walls. My wife Lenka and I went to Sapa because someone told us that she could get some of the spices she wanted for her cookbooks there. And when we got there, all of a sudden I discovered this shop with artificial flowers. The incredible colourful array of flowers fascinated me and of course I immediately went inside and there were two floors, full of shelves, which was something unreal. Of course my wife noticed my reaction and she was like, 'Oh jeez.' When we went there a second time, I bought one flower there. And it started going through my head because I knew I had to document this. But I didn't know how at the time. That was just the first moment, and then I realized that the artificial flowers were everywhere. And actually people didn't care because it was beautiful. Cemeteries were full of them. I had this experience, I went to cemetery on All Souls' Day, and I went to take the raked leaves to the compost container and a lady was throwing artificial flowers there. I was like, 'Well, it's going to thrive on the compost heap.' This proves, that people don't really notice the difference. Well, all of a sudden, I had a vision and I started doing the herbarium, which was very difficult, before I worked it out technologically. I did it with absolute thoroughness, so when somebody sees it, they don't actually see that it's a criticism of something. It's a beautiful herbarium of artificial flowers, it almost looks like it's in watercolour."

  • "Tomáš Ruller and Ivan Kafka invented an event, which was called In between layers (Mezi vrstvami) and it located in a valley near Radotín. It was there - because there are layers of Barrandien, but then of course 'between layers' meant between us artists. But the exhibition was fictional. Everybody got an invitation, only six of us knew that it was fictional - and it was always a reaction to these secret exhibitions that took place. Everybody went there, there was a bunch of policemen and secret police, and we all walked around looking for the exhibition. The funny part was how the Secret police and the cameramen would then come up to us and ask us if we knew where it might be. They were really confused. At the beginning of the valley, they asked us to prove our identity. So in the end some people thought that it was actually the police who made it up and that it was actually an action by them to check on us. However, it was again one of the amazing experiences because there were sixty of us or maybe a hundred people walking through there. Then a few of us ended up in a pub, some of us ended up somewhere else. Well, I have to say it was amazing that it was kept secret until the nineties. Me and Bohdan, we were taking pictures during this gathering, then we would sit down and pick a picture so that nobody would know who took it. And a card was printed out and sent to everybody with a thank you note for the participation at the exhibition."

  • "I think it's important to emphasize that. I feel that a lot of people are missing that today. That they don't understand that if the freedom is given to you artificially and if you don't have it in you, it is meaningless. Because such person has no idea how to use it. Because then such person might think that he is free to do anything. That he can, for example, kill someone because that´s freedom. But the inner and ethical freedom - that's something completely different, and it just gives you a chance to survive a lot of things."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 04.02.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:55:30
    media recorded in project Pamětníci Prahy 3 vyprávějí
  • 2

    Praha, 25.02.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:21:32
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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We learnt to be modest, so the regime couldn’t get to us

Dušan Šimánek in 2021
Dušan Šimánek in 2021
photo: Během natáčení

Dušan Šimánek was born on 9 March 1948 in Příbram. During his studies at the Secondary School of Applied Arts he began to take photographs. During the Prague Spring, he met regularly with a group of artists around the Platýz Gallery, who organised music, theatre and art events called the Markets under Canvas (Trhy pod plachtou). After the August invasion, he and the artists helped various editorial offices that went underground. In the second half of the 1970s, he studied photography at Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), one of his lecturers was Anna Fárová, a photography historian and theoretician. He continued to work with her after she left the school and signed Charter 77, helping her, for example, to process the photographic estate of Josef Sudek. From 1979 he participated in exhibitions of the group 9 and later 9&9 in the foyer of the Drama Club, again informally organised by Anna Fárová. The group’s cooperation resulted in 1981 in a legendary photographic exhibition in the former monastery in Plasy. In addition to these joint projects, Dušan Šimánek created the photo series Silence (Ticho), in which he photographed the walls of abandoned flats in the disused Žižkov area. One of his most recent works is the photo series Herbarium for the 22nd Century (Herbář pro 22. století).