Thesis is focusing on two main themes of the relationship between photography and architecture and their evolution over time of massive digitization. Technologically examines new possibilities of image capture within photographing architecture and compares their with classic scanning method from the time before digital cameras and computers was normally available. Another subject is description of the new possibilities concerning presentation of architecture photography in the new digital era of cameras and improved 3D rendered image, adding to image section of printed and digital magazines, catalogues, social networks and other forms of architecture presentation, all thanks to simplicity of its acquisition and presentation.

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

Xue Huake is a contemporary Chinese humanistic documentary photographer. Until now he has made many successful photographic projects. He is the founder of the Photography Department at the China Academy of Art and head of the department from its very beginning. He is also a member of the Chinese Educational Photographic Society, Chairman of the Zhejiang Folk Photographic Society and a life member of the Royal Photographic Society with the highest award (Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society). In recent years, his works have been often exhibited in the well-known galleries and other art institutions in China and abroad. Over the years in the field of photography Professor Xue has received many awards, including: the first Chinese who received the first prize in the International Exhibition of Photography by Epson. The main published books: Photography from Travels, The Mysteries of Light and Shadow, Tibetan Burial, Tibetans, Walk through Old Streets of Hangzhou etc.

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.

The aim of this diploma thesis was exploration, interpretation and proposing of the preventive care of photographic fund from the state castle Grabštejn. The theoretical part is generally dedicated to the funds and collections administered by the National Heritage Institute, their destiny after the 2nd World War and the historical context which caused movements of these funds. A separate chapter is also devoted to the methods of exploration of the funds and collections. The second part of this thesis focuses on the history of the Grabštejn castle and its last owners - the Clam-Gallas family, with whom the preserved photographs are associated, and on the transport of the funds in the postwar period. The thesis follows the main journey of the photographic fund and related archival materials from the Grabštejn state castle to the collecting sites, museums and archives. Therefore the survey also took place in the National Museum Archives, the National Archives, the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the State Regional Archives in Litoměřice. The fundamental part of the survey was carried out in the castle Grabštejn. There were also studied the specific climate conditions for the photographs, which differ in the castle from the classical museum and archival depositories. Measuring of humidity and temperature was evaluated at the end of the thesis and recommendations for the preventive care were suggested.

Susan Sontag’s reviews and descriptions of agony images is the keystone of war photography. From On photography(1977) to Regarding the Pain of Others(2003), Sontag wrote about how agony images could affect the majority of people. Media ruled photographs and used them as its own container. Through her book, the passiveness of the audiences was examined. She criticised the way of how people looked at an agony image. According to her, audiences constantly consumed other’s pain if the they are far away. She judged repeating formats and simplified messages from media which numb the sensation of people, the surfeit of similar horrendous images turned an audience into a consumer. “Is a photograph ever “real”? she asked. Firstly, within in my thesis I would like to to examine the relevancy of Sontag theory, her interests in emotion in charge of atrocity and pain. To found out the possible respond of the audience, in respect to war in contemporary art photography. When artists have the chance to turn their camera from those atrocity on sites, what could be the differences in audiences’ reactions from traditional war photojournalist. Moreover, Sontag’s concept “the audience as consumers” will be traced back to its basic elements. To scan the particular words and phrase which Sontag used in her two books. Secondly, use Regarding the Pain of Others(2003) as a starting point of the timeline, then search for the critical thoughts which against or support Sontag’s words during the decade. Furthermore, use different concepts of the agony images to examine the remarkable singular atrocity images and the art works relate to war and atrocity. To explore the change according to the interaction between atrocity and contemporary photography and their audiences. After all, use the dialects between the theories and the war in contemporary art photography to extent the perspective from Regarding the Pain of Others(2003) to get closer to our time — to build the the reference of how to see an agony image.

Diploma thesis provides a deeper look on the phenomenon of financial crisis in the context of social documentary photography. The core of the thesis lays in comparing FSA in 1930´s and contemporary projects which are focused on economic crisis. Apart from analyzing work of selected FSA authors I do also focus on Meith&Hagel´s work and August Sander´s photographs. In second part of the thesis I am exploring new forms of social photography in contemporary world. I am describing work of three different authors reflecting nowadays financial situation with the help of fine art photography.

The present thesis is dealing with the theoretical concept of modernity. It is attempting to define the concept with a reference to the experience of a shifted time-perception. The first part of the text analyses some of the theoretical approaches to the concept. The following parts are dedicated to the work of Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer and are trying to examine the way in which those two described their own experience of modernity.

The first part presents a brief summary of the historical genesis of cameraless photography in the context of the general history of photography. In line with G. Batchen's concept, the work emphasizes the autonomy of this technological and expressive process and qualitative comparability with the procedures and manifestations of classic camera photography. This "photographic history" culminates in the development of avant-garde photographic experiments, especially in the systematic development of Man Ray's "rayograms." Against the avant-garde concept (dadaism, Bauhaus, elements of graphic constructivism) is defined the concept of Běla Kolářová from the beginning of the sixties of the 20th century, which forms the very theme of the work. Specific procedures and concrete results of Běla Kolářová´s work ("artificial negatives", "X-rays of the circle", "light drawings") are observed in the context of the creative experiments of the Czech art scene of the time: visual poetry, J. Kolář's collages, Czech informel, neoconstructivism and geometric abstraction, „Confrontation“ and „Crossroad“ groups, etc. The originality of Kolářová's contribution is reflected through the analysis of the interpretation works of the Czech kunsthistory (J. Hlaváček, J. Valoch, K. Císař, J. Padrta and others). It is emphasized in what Kolářová's creation of photograms exceeds conventional classifications, and what specifically refers to non-derived creative resources and conceptualizations (M. Duchamp, R. Caillois, surrealism, W. Benjamin). From these comparative aspects, the conclusions are generalizing the contribution and importance of the cameraless photography of Běla Kolářová as a legitimate part of the history of Czech visual art of the second half of the 20th century.