A World In Color: Czechia, The Dawn of a New Era
Discover the first reveal of unseen images from the Magnum color library archive, highlighting two pivotal post-war events: the Soviet Union invasion in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in 1989
Welcome to A World in Color, a journey through Magnum’s unexplored color library archive held in Paris. In partnership with Fujifilm and MPP (the Heritage and Photography Library of Paris), A World in Color is a project to digitize the vast color library, which has remained untouched for decades.
Carefully stored away in the late 19th century Saint-Cyr fort, with over 650,000 color slides dating from the 1950s to the early 2000s, the color library archive holds images that have remained — until now — largely unseen. With the help of Magnum’s Archive and Production teams, and Fujifilm’s GFX digital systems, selections from the archive are now being made public.
Each month, a new Image Reveal from the archive, spotlighting a different country, will drop across Magnum’s platforms. This first Image Reveal traces the timeline of a country that underwent monumental political upheavals during the last century: Czechia. Revisiting two pivotal post-war events, the uprising against the Soviet invasion in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in 1989, these images provide a visual time capsule of the former Czechoslovakia from the lens of Magnum photographers.
“Everybody knew something was going to happen,” Ian Berry recalled. It was August 1968 when Berry got a call from his bureau chief, asking if he wanted to go to Czechoslovakia as Soviet tanks rattled towards Prague. The Soviet response came after a surge of free speech and cultural flourishing in the country; the newly appointed leader of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party, Alexander Dubček, had eased censorship, promising “socialism with a human face.”
On August 21, 1968, Berry, one of the only foreign photographers to witness the invasion, and the young Czech photographer Josef Koudelka, who would later join Magnum, watched alongside the residents of Prague as troops under the Warsaw Pact countries forcibly seized the capital. Chaos ensued as people descended onto the streets to defy thousands of soldiers, only 23 years after the end of the Nazi occupation. Soviet tanks quickly targeted the capital’s radio and television stations — emblems of free speech — crushing the civil liberties achieved under Dubček’s reforms during the Prague Spring. An estimated 137 people were killed in their efforts to challenge the Soviet troops, and hundreds seriously injured.
Not long after Berry ventured back across the border — having smuggled his film in the hubcaps of his rented Volkswagen Beetle, which he drove into a ditch after four days of barely any sleep or food — Marilyn Silverstone arrived on the scene. It was a year after she became one of the first women elected as a member of Magnum Photos, and nine years before her photographic journey would lead her to become a Buddhist nun. Silverstone took to the occupied streets, creating a series of color photographs that viscerally portray the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Her use of color directs our gaze toward expressive nuances, rather than geometric accents often contoured in black and white. Here Silverstone’s lens serves as a microscope, homing in on the quotidian tensions and modes of resistance under the occupation.
As Prague mourned those killed in the demonstrations, Silverstone photographed a memorial adorned with fresh flowers, focusing on a protest poster designed by graphic artist Václav Ševčík, whose art was also widely distributed during the Velvet Revolution. Color here is telling: the red tear emphasizes the traumatic response to the victims’ deaths, including Ševčík’s close friend, Milan Kadlec, a 21-year-old murdered by Soviet soldiers on the day of the invasion in front of the Czechoslovak Radio building. Ševčík’s posters were confiscated by the secret police until 1989.
Prague radio stations initially held fast, broadcasting news of the invasion and its counter-protests. In Silverstone’s image of men leaning in towards a transistor radio, their heads are almost touching. Color allows their distinct hairlines to stand out — both young and older — accentuating their proximity and comradery in the midst of fear and concern.
Silverstone’s series, revealed here for the first time, marks a definitive before and after in the cultural psyche. Renowned Czech poet Miroslav Holub’s collection of poems in translation is in fact entitled Poems Before and After, drawing a line through his writing before and after the invasion. Under the punitive Soviet “normalization” period, the next two decades would prove to be a trying time for dissidents of the regime.
"Dig in. Resist. Persist…"
- Václav Havel
Two decades later, in 1989, Berry found himself in Prague again, along with Magnum photographer Steve McCurry. They witnessed the wave of protests that would culminate in the Velvet Revolution — the dawn of a new era, as Berry marks in his annotation above. A week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a student demonstration in Prague was violently suppressed by riot police, and the event galvanized peaceful pro-democracy rallies spearheaded by Václav Havel. On November 27, McCurry captured an aerial view of the climactic general strike, as an estimated 300,000 people marched to Prague’s emblematic Wenceslas Square. The momentous occasion epitomized the call to action by Havel, the poet and playwright turned president, in his 1977 poem, “The Little Owl Who Brayed”: “Dig in. Resist. Persist…”*
Berry’s images from his return to Prague exemplify a new before and after, similar to the use of “break” in the Czech phrase for “turn of the century” (přelom století)†; not just a turn but a breaking open towards new possibilities. This time, he used color to chronicle the transformation: the euphoric celebrations in the streets as the Revolution came to a head, a luminous Czech flag at Havel’s inauguration, and an electric New Year’s kiss just two days later (see opening image).
Attending rallies, Berry snapped a portrait of Valtr Komárek, a leading figure during the Revolution. He also captured an unprecedented moment: Václav Malý, overcome with emotion, before delivering his first mass after a decade of persecution. Maly was forbidden from the priesthood in 1979 for his outspoken activism against the regime. He was imprisoned for 7 months, sharing a cell with murderers.
Afterwards, he was forced to clean toilets, stoke coal and work in boiler rooms, while he secretly continued his ministry, despite being under state surveillance. At a mass demonstration on November 25, 1989, he addressed thousands as a spokesman for the Civic Forum, demanding respect for human rights, free speech, and democratic elections. Berry’s intimate portrait immortalizes a new chapter in Malý’s unwavering lifework. Today, Malý serves as the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Prague.
Of course, beyond these historical upheavals, life continued. Elliott Erwitt, Thomas Hoepker, Marc Riboud, and Gueorgui Pinkhassov documented the everyday rhythms and pastimes of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, 70s, and 90s.
Spa-goers stroll through Mariánské Lázně’s cavernous Golden Era resort, a cultural gem where Friedrich Nietzsche and Frédéric Chopin once enjoyed the springs; kids balance in unison during a 1964 gym class; a couple pays a visit to Prague’s Jewish cemetery; friends enjoy a local haunt in the capital.
Color in these images begets a softer aura and, consequently, a mellowed atmosphere — a token of the pre-digital age — from the pastel palette in the streaming light of Riboud’s image, to the primary colors in Erwitt’s. Pinkhassov, who Berry once said “makes me want to go out and shoot, not to recreate his style but rather to reinvent myself,” takes us back to a 90s café, with its illuminated smoke and sunlit halos over the subjects’ silhouettes. “I refer to myself as a hunter,” Pinkhassov discloses, “I’m chasing light.”
"I’m chasing light."
- Gueorgui Pinkhassov
This first installation of previously unseen slides from the archive attests to the population’s unwavering endurance, from the crushing of civil liberties under the Soviet “normalization,” to the eruption of freedom that broke ties with the country’s historical modus operandi. A unique glimpse of the agency in the 20th century, these images revisit the country’s dynamic cultural life and contribute to the evolution of photography at large, chronicling a world in color.
Live Events
Join us from March 22–23, when Magnum travels to Prague to launch the first FUJIKINA event for A World in Color. Curated by Magnum photographer Rafał Milach, the exhibition will unveil a new set of 10 unseen images that spotlight Czechia, including more images from both Silverstone and Berry, and original slide sheets from the Paris color library archive. Milach will also present his own series of 10 new photographs commissioned for the event, inspired by his selection from the archive, and give an in-person talk.
PRAGUE, CZECHIA, March 22–23, 2025
With Rafał Milach
Book your tickets here
* Poem translated by D. Celone, with Liba Hladik and Paul Wilson.
† As mentioned in Kathryn Murphy’s review of Miroslav Holub: Poems Before and After in Translation and Literature, 2009.
Own an exclusive World in Color print of Ian Berry’s 1989 New Year’s Eve kiss, as seen above, available until March 30 at the Magnum Store. Shop the print here.
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