Milon Novotny | Among Us People

Milon Novotny, the titan of the Czech humanistic photography of the 20th century, belongs to the generation influenced by E. Steichen’s legendary exhibition The Family of Man. Similarly to H. Cartier-Bresson Novotny photographed exclusively in black and white using a Leica camera and was a key figure of the so called “decisive moment” genre. Despite the fact that one can find accounts of the 1968 Czechoslovak occupation or Jan Palach’s funeral in Novotny’s work, the main focus of it is not reportage. He was a photographical poet of the everyday, empathetic to the situation unraveling in front of the camera and able to see beyond the seeming everydayness and rapidly recognize the most expressive moment and detail.