The first comprehensive publications and photographic exhibitions, for example, 100 Years of Czech Photography in Prague in 1939, focused on technical issues. This approach was gradually replaced by the presentation of photography as an art form, which has flourished during the last thirty years in the boom of publications, exhibitions, museum collections, and university education. The current information revolution, however, has created the need to view photography from a different perspective, as the media have become the dominant force of today's world. With photography, as Prague native Vilem Flusser noted, technical images have become the basis for mass-media communication. Modern society is inconceivable without the mass distribution of images, and thus the beginnings of many current phenomena - from the cult of celebrity and images of daily events to pornography - are closely associated with the workings of the photographic medium. In this view, photography is an integral part of art as well as of science and technology, entertainment, politics, commerce and also private life. The twenty-one sections of this exhibition explore the beginnings of these long-term trends and their reflections in photographic endeavor, while placing select works into a broader cultural context by means of the accompanying material. Rather than to present an overview of the history of photography in Bohemia and Moravia, the exhibition seeks to bring to life the diverse uses of the photographic medium with respect to their current significance. The story of the photographic medium brings together many fields, traditions and trends - all kinds of stories, together creating a rich network of relationships and contexts, which inform our life. Jaroslav Andel