Interwiew

​​​​​​This interview was originally published by the Czech news website Aktuálně.cz in February 2021, when the jury of the Sony World Photography Awards announced the nominations. At the time, I had no idea that I would go on to win the Architecture category in the Professional competition and compete for the overall title alongside ten other photographers. At the time, I was working as a writer and photographer for Aktuálně.cz, and the interview was conducted by my colleague Marek Pros.

From my perspective, it’s huge. The competition is one of the most prestigious photography competitions in the world, and even such renowned media outlets as The Guardian have compared it to the photographic equivalent of the Oscars. It has been held since 2008, and in the prestigious Professional competition, only one Czech photographer, Stanislav Krupař, had previously made it into the top three in a category. He finished second in the Contemporary Issues category in 2014. 

No Czech photographer had ever won any of the Professional categories, so whatever happened at the announcement of this year’s Professional winners on April 15, finishing in the top three would have been a major achievement. We already had winners in the Open competition: Martin Stranka in 2019 and Michaela Smidova in 2016.

It’s quite a funny story. I submitted my photographs to the competition and then stopped following it, because the chances of succeeding among such enormous competition are really very small. Every year, the jury judges hundreds of thousands of photographs, and the competition attracts some of the biggest names in contemporary photography. Then, not long ago, my phone rang and an English-speaking woman was on the other end. Even though I had introduced myself, she asked whether she was really speaking to Tomáš Vocelka and how my name was pronounced.

I had recently been getting quite a few calls in English from a supposed brokerage firm that was spamming me with offers of incredibly attractive investment opportunities. So I assumed this was yet another spam call and rather bluntly asked, “What do you want?” The woman started apologizing for not telling me immediately why she was calling. Then she told me that I had been nominated for an award in the Architecture category at the Sony World Photography Awards. And then I was the one apologizing profusely for being so blunt at the beginning.

Photographers are informed about the nominations somewhat in advance so that they have time to prepare. At the same time, however, they have to agree not to talk about the nomination until the official announcement.

It was part of my editorial work for Aktualne magazine. My colleague Magdaléna Medková came up with the story and asked me if I would like to photograph it for her article. I have to admit that my first reaction was, “Oh God, no!”

It seemed incredibly sad and depressing to me. I immediately thought about how painful it had been when two dogs we loved died within a short period of each other. But that feeling lasted only a short while. I quickly realized that the subject had many very interesting layers, and of course I was then happy to go and photograph it.

A former military site in the countryside near Drnov had stood abandoned for seventeen years. Then it was bought by two friends, Michal Seba and Martin Chum. With the help of architect Petr Hájek, they transformed it into the Eternal Hunting Grounds pet crematorium.

Probably the most powerful moment for me came when we opened the doors to the minimalist memorial hall and a soft, almost ethereal glow spilled into the space. At that moment, I realized that in our minds there isn’t such a fundamental difference between how we perceive the death of a person and the death of a pet. We often see our animals as being, essentially, on the same level as ourselves.

One of them is about the way we humanize our animals. There is also a strange paradox of the modern world: there are crowds of people all around us, yet many of us are incredibly lonely. And for such a person, their closest companion is often a dog or a cat. At the same time, the story contains an incredibly positive message about our world. We live in an age when we can transform former Cold War military bases into works of art and architecture. It was precisely this multilayered nature of the subject that made me choose these photographs and submit them to the competition.

I’m a journalist, so my subjects usually grow out of what is happening around us. When I go somewhere to photograph, I don’t plan things too much. I trust my instincts and feelings when I’m photographing. I believe in the importance of empathy and in the idea that good photographs come from your heart, not from your camera. I try to connect with the atmosphere around me and with people’s feelings, and then convey that in my photographs.

I like natural light, so I don’t carry too much equipment with me. I usually take quite a large number of photographs during a shoot. I’ve got out of the habit of treating every shutter release as precious, as I did back when I worked with film. I like trying less conventional viewpoints, and I don’t mind when some photographs don’t work. I can easily come back from a shoot with several hundred images on my memory card and eventually select perhaps twenty that I will actually use.

As for my personal work, I most enjoy wandering the streets, photographing life as it unfolds there, or interesting details of architecture.

I work for an online publication, so for me it isn’t such a dramatic change. Except for the closed galleries — that bothers me, because right now my photographs are part of a beautiful exhibition alongside the work of five other photographers, in a gallery that nobody can visit. But otherwise, working online has its advantages. An online newspaper can easily publish a photo story with, say, 35 photographs. That is much harder to do in a print magazine or newspaper.

The most important thing is: submit your photographs. If you don’t, you’re giving up any chance of success before you even start. And be yourself, and never stop learning new things.