To have an effort to understand it, to recognize positive human values…to have a magnificent naive sincerity that helped me to create a series of subjective scenes over several years in one place in the Iron Mountains region, as a contrast between two lifestyles.

I don’t even want to think which way is better. It certainly didn’t feed my permanent inner restlessness about how to handle the limited amount of free time I had here. I feel a calmness and a sense of belonging with the horses and the people around me, which caresses me and at the same time makes me think.

People there talk to each other in a kind of honest, natural and yet wise, noble and non-condescending manner. The main thing is that they talk about life and discover truths that everyone can understand.

As time goes on, and the mists of my own prejudices are dispelled more and more, I absolutely try to look more critically at our own species and uncover the secrets about ourselves, the artifacts buried under thousands of years of human dominance, with its tendency to elevate the mind over the feelings, logic over intuition, territory over relationships, goal over path leading to achievement, and power over cooperation…

I remember each journey leading to this place as an event where the omnipresent and passing resonance of this space lured me to my visual cues… a place where I came as a seeker and I am still one, but I no longer seek in the stars and in books, but begin more listen to the teachings that rustle in my blood…

Evaluation of the author’s work by Jan Hlavatý:

Jiří Nováček’s photographs capture this fact in raw poetic form and convey to us a glimpse of a simple and passionate being. They depict the harshness of the natural environment and the human approach to domestic creatures, dependent on humans, with a chiaroscuro, gently contrasting design, accompanied by a decent coloration.

Jiří Nováček, by choosing a traditional form of photographic expression of economical color tonality, emphasizes the calmness, but at the same time the drama of the situations in the given subject.

Captured images have the character of a document highlighted by artistic quality. In selected fleeting moments, when it is important to sensitively press the shutter of the camera at the right moment, we viewers are given a glimpse into the privacy of a courageous individual who has decided to spend his life partially away from the hustle and bustle of cities.

In individual shots, we are interested in the mutual relationship of people, accompanied by dogs and horses, who have confidence in their master. Everything is impressively captured by the aesthetic sense of the author, who with his documentation represents the meaning of an inconspicuous existence from the point of view of the modern world in a not very comfortable, but beautiful environment filled with human feelings. This is the strength of Nováček’s photographic statement, which he conveys to us through his compositions.