Silver gelatin print on glossy paper, original author's enlargement. 23.1x24.1 cm. Verso signed in pencil "Jiří Hampl" and no. "48". Slightly frayed corners and minor breaks in the paper. A significant Czech photographer and creator of plastic objects. After graduating from the general secondary school (gymnázium) in Kladno he worked, for political reasons, as an unskilled labourer until 1954, during which time he began devoting himself to art photography. From 1955 he was a photographer at the Cabinet for the Theory and History of Art of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, later the Institute of Theory and History of Art of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and from 1966–86 head of its photo studio. He published in magazines dealing with fine art (Umění, Výtvarný život, Výtvarná kultura, Umění a řemeslo), collaborated with the publishers Obelisk, Odeon, Artia, Albatros and Panorama, and produced numerous exhibition catalogues, calendars and postcards featuring works of art. His principal interest lay in free creative work. In the second half of the 1950s he turned away from traditional photography and further shaped (deformed) the image during development, printing, enlarging, etc., and made detail crops. He drew inspiration from contemporary imaginative art as well as surrealism, constructivism and abstract painting, to which he created a photographic parallel. He reached his peak in the mid-1960s with a distinctive type of structural photography. He took part in three Scottish photo salons and exhibited in Austria and Germany. In 1968 he was a founding member of the Club of Concretists, initiated by the theorist Arsén Pohribný.