Life on Earth through the eyes of its inhabitans

Jan Nožička is without a doubt a promising talent in the pool of Czech photography. At the same time, he has been of great value to the Week of Life project, exploiting the most out of his creativity and artistic vision, while staying modest and realistic. As a result, his weeks have a meaning and do not deviate from the most important aspect - the documentary genre. Jan Nožička is one of the members who entirely understood the concept and idea of the project and achieved to combine the two in a coherent artistic manner. It takes some time to discover such valuable personas, which are then deservedly acknowledged in the most important of sections, the Week of life Masters.

As of this day, we present you Mr. Zdeněk Dvořák as a Photo Assessment Manager of the project WoL who will take care of its visual aspect.

Costa Rica, Pura Vida. This phrase (often used when greeting someone in Costa Rica), translated into pure life or an expression of utter well-being, immediately makes a strong statement about this ‘rich coast’ country. Even the happiness index, which identifies the level of satisfaction of residents living in a given country, ranks Costa Rica amongst the top countries in the world, portraying it as a so-called wonderland and one of the happiest places to live on earth. We had the chance to find out what life really is about in Costa Rica while interviewing Toh Gouttenoire, a French photographer who settled on this island and started a family a few years back. Why and how had Costa Rica influenced him the way it did is only a small part of the following interview. 

While approving photographic sets, we ran into a week of Mr. Xiong Jun named ‘traditional opera actor’, which took us behind the scenes of Chinese opera. His photographs of the opera actors during preparations before entering the stage left us fascinated and completely in awe, since we were able to experience an unknown world only the chosen ones can enter. The photographs left us wanting to know more about this type of art and due to the language barrier between us and Mr. Xiong Jun, we decided to explore this world, find further information ourselves and finally share it with you in the form of reportage. Hereby we thank Mr. Xiong Jun for such inspiration and fascinating photographs. 

As Martina Štolbová admits herself, photography has become a part of her life only recently. Despite that fact, it has completely absorbed her nowadays and joining a project such as Week of Life was a great new challenge for her. She puts her heart into taking photographs and expresses fully what she feels at the time she has a camera in her hand. As a result, her weeks were appealing right from the start and that is why her heart-felt images have now reached the rank suitable for the Week of Life Masters section, in which she is the first non-professional photographer. Meet a unique woman, who not only regards photography as a type of entertainment, but also as a tool that enables her to find her own meaning of life.

Acquiring such a photograph took me quite a while. I intended to grasp the atmosphere of the Barcelona Grand Prix and I succeeded in the end.

There is a new member of our WoL team Petr Benda.

 Viewfinder-less ultra zoom compact cameras are a very popular type nowadays. The range of the stabilized optics is usually high, but based on dimensions, they fall into the typical compact camera category. Moreover, the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10 is very well equipped with all sorts of functions, including the above standard built-in GPS module.

I stood facing the heaven´s gate... Someone entered it, someone left it to descend to the Earth. I am a father of two daughters. Of two beautiful and healthy girls. I´m familiar with the fear caused by fever and even though the nights I have stayed awake might be counted on the fingers of my hands, suddenly I percieve the life in a different way. I hold out my hand to a doctor – God´s right hand. In his eyes I can see the incredible energy and determination. I enter the department of neonatology with him. As he starts his work, doctor Krcho, the chief of department, that has been working in this field since 1989, also begins his narration about people, their worries, opportunities, about the hardship and complexity of the whole system.

At the beginning, it was coincidence, a short meeting and a simple question, as it usually is with interesting projects. Words became action and coincidence turned into an extraordinary set of photos. I photographed a job order where the main theme was a woman’s body; a nude woman’s body to be exact. For these kinds of projects, I usually choose the models myself since picking the wrong ones tends to turn against you at one point or the other. This time, I let the casting agency choose one for me. This small exception to my habits paid off in sense that I met a ‘perfect object’ for one of the most interesting calendars I’ve ever photographed.