Jitka Hanzlová

Jitka Hanzlová

In 1982 Jitka Hanzlová defected from the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia and settled in Essen in West Germany.

Since then she has sought to explore her experiences through photography, producing a body of work at once poetic and truthful.

Hanzlová’s photography is in constant pursuit of the relationship between the individual and the context in which he or she lives. It scrutinizes the ways in which home and surroundings indelibly shape identity. Drawing on her own life story, Hanzlová’s photographs also speak to a more universal longing for a sense of place.

This is the first major retrospective of Hanzlová’s photography over the last two decades. Emerging from her experience of two different cultures and political systems, her work is a profound meditation on European identity in a post-Cold War world.

Image © National Galleries of Scotland