This thesis aims to present and compare selected photographic projects mapping the changes in human living environment since the early nineties to the present. This includes approaches of authors interpreting the landscape in a different context than as the aesthetic artefact. The photographic projects selected for this thesis represent not only the artistic side of photography but also their sociological, ecological, social, psychological and anthropological overlaps enabling the alternative interpreting approaches.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe in detail and to classify various tendencies such

The Master thesis deals with life and work of a Silesian photographer and painter Józef Raszka (1875-1929). During the compilation of the thesis emphasis was put on searching and collecting information in archives and finally on their processing into one comprehensive unit. Generally, the thesis is divided into four main parts. The first chapter outlines historical events that took place during Raszka's life in a region he lived in. The other two chapters describe Raszka's life and the research method in detail. All of the chapters mentioned above should introduce this extraordinary and controversial personality to a reader and simultaneously get him/her acquainted with the artist's complicated character and interesting attitude toward life. In the last chapter the findings are applied in order to interpret Raszka's work. The indivisible part of the thesis consists also of a photography illustration and a catalogue that can be found at end of the thesis and which encompasses reproductions of all Raszka's photographs which are known.

American painter Ed Ruscha has been using medium of photography since his studies at Chouinard ART Institute in Los Angeles. In 1963 he published author's book Twentysix Gasoline Stations which depicts gasoline stations on the road between Los Angeles and Oklahoma. My diploma thesis describes Ruscha´s book and the time and circumstances under which it was being made. I am putting Ruscha´s book in the context of cold war and atmosphere of this period. I am writing about american individualism and expansion of automobility and its strategies. I focused deeply on Ruscha´s early artist period and his studies in Los Angeles. I am describing the historical context of Ruscha´s way from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. I emphasize its influence on american society. I inquire Ruscha's point of view to art, art history and his resistance to mainstream that was coming from New York to California. The book Twentysix Gasoline Stations was published three years after Ruscha's graduation, so it is considered as an early masterpiece. I am writing about fusion of art and roadside imagery and its historical context of 30's and 40's. I emphasize their difference and their similarity. The field of my study was extended by Paul Virilio´s essay Aesthetics of Disappearance where Virilio draws relationship between automobilism and cinematography. Through his essay I am coming back to Ed Ruscha and thanks to it I am finding new relationships in Ruscha's work. I enhance the atmosphere of this period by mentioning roadmovies and its link to american individualism and explosion of automobilism. I contrast this context with situation in Europe, its identity and geopolitical influences. At the end of my thesis I emphasize Ruscha's work and his contribution to questions about aesthetic and non-aesthetic and his reflexion of automobilism expansion and a book form as a new way to present art.

Definition of the conservation processes, which are appropriate and inappropriate for the conservation of secession albums in the reflection of photographic techniques, which are an integral part of the album. Another aim is to define an imaginary boundaries recommending to conservator of photos, what should be able done by himself, which intervations should have been consulting with a specialist of the issue and the intervations that should be done by a specialist of the issue. The work also contains descriptions of used materiál, their usual damage and especially the conservation techniques.

The first part of this paper examines the fundamental principles of landscape photography starting with the formation of landscape as a concept and a painting genre, up to landscape photography and its various identities as an art medium, a document, an imperialistic weapon, a tool of identification. The beginning of landscape photography is presented with special focus on mountain photography. The theme moves American West where the first National Park was born, an institution that can be both praised for bringing people closer to nature, and blamed for keeping people away from direct natural experience.

The thesis Photography and fashion: formation of Empty Image explores the phenomenon of fashion photography as it appears in lifestyle magazines. The hypothesis of this study is that the current fashion photography uses creative painting techniques, which denies the key idea about photography - that photography mirrors reality - but in the same time photography recipients are expected to believe this idea. This leads us to the assumption that fashion misuses photography. Fashion Photography, by constant repetition and displaying identical objects that in reality don't exist, which only refer to an indefinite referent gives rise to an empty image with no meaning. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The subject of my practical diploma thesis is a painting reaction to the photographs from years 1915 to 1930. I see them as a " photographs of dead(lost) world. The photographs of people whose dont live in present but the photographs are evidence of their existence in the past.

The thesis "A content analysis of photographs in Pestry tyden and LIFE magazine" analyses two successful magazines of the first half of the 20th century. Intentionally, two periodicals of different origin (Czechoslovakia and the United States) are compared to investigate the assumption that the different origin has major influence on the overall concept and focus of the periodicals. The subject of this study is the selection of volumes of 1937-1945, the period of the greatest success of both magazines. The study aims not only at describing the contents of the periodicals but also at situating them into social, political and art-historical context. The study is based on a theoretical part which gives a general overview of photojournalism and tracks the slow beginning of journalistic photography and the birth of the first illustrated magazines. This part also deals with technological development which made possible quality image journalism. The study does not leave out numerous restrictions, e. g. censorship, which were a frequent point of struggle for the magazines' authors. Key words: illustrated magazines, magazine photography, photojournalism, documentary photography, war photography, censorship, propaganda

(EN) The thesis was created as an analysis of the applied photography of Jan Svoboda (1934-1990). The czech art photographer whose work concludes, next to his own fine-art photographs, amount of documentary pictures of his contemporary art colleagues. Based on an inside view of his fine-art works consisting mostly of still-lifes it became possible to re-analyze large quantity of found material of his so called art reproduction photography which follows the very same principles of his own artwork. The analysis focuses only on documentation of three dimensional pieces of work. Resulting conclusion shows Jan Svoboda as an actual creative competitor of the documented artist's work. By his act of opening a dialog with the documented art piece which leads to a photograph that might have been often considered as an abuse of the particular art piece for the sake of formal qualities of Svoboda's work. The last part of the thesis aims to briefly reveal worldwide context of photographers documenting art pieces with emphasis on the medium of photography and therefore often surpassing demand for faithful depiction of the art object.