Plzen, West Bohemia, July 30 (CTK) – The Moments of History, a touring exhibition of photographs from the archives of the Czech News Agency (CTK) highlighting significant moments of 100 years since the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, was opened in Plzen on Monday.
The photographic exhibition is one in a series of events marking the centenary of Czechoslovakia’s birth on October 28, 1918. On the same day, CTK was also established, so the agency will celebrate 100 years of its existence in October.
The touring exhibition of 30 panels with 163 photographs will last in Plzen until August 19. Then it will move to Usti nad Labem, north Bohemia, and Ceske Budejovice, south Bohemia, and finally return to Prague in October.
The exhibition was first opened in the garden of the Wallenstein Palace, the seat of the Senate, the upper house of the Czech parliament, in Prague centre on April 1. Then in Brno, Hradec Kralove, east Bohemia, and Ostrava, north Moravia, from which it moved to Plzen.
The photographs were selected from the agency’s unique archive housing about seven million pictures. Each year from 1918 till 2018 is characterised by at least one photo depicting a significant event or the atmosphere of that time.
The exhibition was being prepared for almost six months, its co-author Petr Mlch, the editor-in-chief of the CTK Photobank, said previously.
“It should be milestones, key events as well as ordinary picures. We tried to make a good mixture to make the exhibition instructive and interesting from both the factual and photographic point of view,” Mlch said.
The CTK photo archive survived even the end of World War Two thanks to a lucky coincidence that it was stored outside the main building that was hit by a devastating fire.
