Pavel Vavrousek | Nova Sedlica

In 1971-1981 Pavel Vavrousek documented Nova Sedlica, the easternmost village of then Czechoslovakia. He captured one of the last islands of rural togetherness where people lived traditional lives only minimally different from ones their ancestors led, in ever-present negotiations with nature. Where people worked with farm animals and their time unfolded in the rhythm of alternating seasons and Orthodox holidays. Vavrousek photographed a community not yet affected by unifying globalization. He noticed the vanishing and endangered and captured it while it lasted. The last village. For the next four decades, the photographs laid unseen in an archive.