You are cordially invited to a photography exhibition by David Macháč titled PRIVATE PARADISES – Gardeners as a Phenomenon, organized by SOBIC, z.ú. in collaboration with curator Petr Hrubeš. The exhibition will open with a vernissage on March 19, 2026, at 5:00 PM and will run until September 27, 2026.
About the Exhibition and the Author
Since 2025, David Macháč has been a PhD student in the Creative Photography program at Silesian University in Opava. In his doctoral research, he focuses on the theme of allotment garden colonies in photography (The Phenomenon of Urban Gardens in Photography), which naturally continues his long-term artistic practice.
He has been systematically photographing allotment garden colonies since 2006 up to the present day — in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, and France. A key aspect of his work is the connection between people and the places they create as personal spaces: gardens and garden cottages as “small architectures” of everyday life. As he himself says, “everyone is their own architect here” — which is why he is not primarily interested in flowerbeds, but rather in the personality of the gardener and how it is reflected in the character of the place.
Macháč’s approach is based on a direct confrontation between the portrayed subject and their own creation; the relationship between person, aesthetics, and structure is thus made more tangible than in works that deal only with the “trace” of the owner in architecture without people present. Other layers of his interest include how fashion and aesthetic trends permeate garden environments, as well as the question of the placement of allotment colonies within the urban structure.
In 2017, he was nominated for Czech Press Photo (Portrait category – series).
In Poland, he received awards in the Śląska Fotografia Prasowa competition: 2nd place (2018) and shared 3rd place (2021) together with Lukáš Horký.
He works as a lecturer at the Institute of Creative Photography at Silesian University in Opava and, since 2025, has served as curator of the KUPE Gallery in Opava. In 2025, a selection from his series Gardeners became part of the photography collection of Pałac Schoena – Muzeum w Sosnowcu in Poland.
Admission outside the opening reception: CZK 50.00 per person.
