Andrew Zuckerman’s Wisdom project and Václav Havel
June 29, 2012
Allow us to draw your attention to a series of 2007 portrait photographs of Václav Havel taken for the publication, “Wisdom: Life,” which was put together by Andrew Zuckerman.
Václav Havel’s participation in the project, which focuses on world figures who have reached the age of 70, is illustrative of his relationship to being posed by photographers, or rather his unwillingness to be the object of their camera lenses. That is also reflected in a sentence which Václav Havel wrote to Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had asked him to take part. “I have to admit, however, that I have never been able to fulfill the demands of photographers, not even when I was forced into it by my presidential post. Requests to pose were for me – sorry for using such a word in front of you – pure hell.” Proof that such hell can still lead to well-taken photographs can be found here.