ARLES, France — In communist Czechoslovakia, it paid to conform. But behind closed doors at Prague’s only gay club, people could be free. In the early 1980s, Libuse Jarcovjakova, now 67, photographed the lovers, friends and strangers she met as a young woman at that underground spot, called T-Club. Many of the images have never been shown in public before, but now have a headline slot at the Rencontre d’Arles, a major annual festival of international photography in the South of France. Ms. Jarcovjakova’s show is part of a strand of exhibitions at the festival titled “My Body is a Weapon.” Curated by Sam Stourdzé, the Rencontre d’Arles’ director, the shows celebrate the work of unheralded artists from the 1980s, who Mr. Stourdzé said “stayed alive, existed and resisted with photography.”The portraits on display — taken in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Spain after the Franco dictatorship — broke taboos around nudity, gender and sexuality, and asserted their subjects as individuals in societies that put the collective first.

Source: International New York Times July 05, 2019 12:45 UTC