The work of the Brno-based photographer David Židlický could be thematically summed up as a preoccupation with urban subjects from the environments of coffee bars, residential villas, gardens, post offices and railways, which he photographs using the famous Rolleiflex brand. This passion for aesthetic refinement supported by a personal fascination with Czech design of the thirties to the eighties, personified by the Tatra car brand, was central to the photography group Czech Paralax, which Židlický co-founded in 1994. The lifestyle full of minor rituals which the group promoted, albeit with a hint of exaggeration, in Brno, is manifest in the photography of all of its members, taken on trips, walks, social evenings, visits to coffee bars and meetings.
The black and white, square photographs of David Židlický supplemented with everyday civil poetry are characterised by a certain timelessness and not anchored in a specific place. The pictures feature a well thought out, often diagonal composition, often determined by electricity wires, architectural features or railway lines, which usually appear as though they had been photographed many years or even decades ago in completely foreign cities. The sophisticated ambiguities of these photographs is intensified by a cultivated game with light, which sometimes bathes a picture in a magical glow, and other times dramatises the subtle self-portraits of the photographer, hidden in the reflections of windows, shop fronts, mirrors or Christmas baubles.
