Jindřich Štreit is one of the most important Czech socio-documentary photographers. In his early works he created collections with Roma (gypsy) motifs and also using the stage area of the Olomouc Theatre. One can consider the most important contribution of his works to be his imaging of villages, private life, and interpersonal relationships. In the 1980s he was able to capture the collectivist socialist village during the time of Socialist Realism in several towns where he lived. He expressed the feelings of the time and furthermore added thereto a personalised artistic statement on the human condition. Even at the very beginning of his systematic interest in villages, Štreit shows a characteristic interest in certain motifs, which had earlier been the subject of independent series: interpersonal contact, cigarettes, alcohol, meetings, elections, television, children, farm animals and pets. Headlines, posters and t-shirt prints all bear his important storylines. Numerous motifs also refer to his drawing from traditions in a range of villages. Destruction, loss of cultural values and rupture of traditional village ties are all omnipresent.
Besides this he ran the gallery in Sovinec, beginning in 1974. There he prepared exhibits for children featuring the works of top artists. A number of these became subject to public bans. Since 1997 he has prepared programmes for the Chapel Gallery (Galerie V kapli) in Bruntál, but he also plans exhibits in a number of other towns (Šternberk, Bludov, Moravský Beroun, and at the Sovinec Castle).
In 1982 he was the only photographer to take part in the exhibit of non-official creative artists in Prague. His pictures attracted the attention of the Communist secret police, StB. They called him in for questioning and shortly thereafter he received a ten-month jail sentence, with a two-year paroled (delayed) entry. The grounds for the punishment (defaming the Republic and its representatives) was the interpretation of exhibited, and in some cases non-published, photos (following a search of his full photo archive by the authorities). His punishment also included confiscation of part of his negatives, positives and cameras (the so-called criminal instruments).
After the revolution his situation changed. Since 1991 he has worked on a number of documentary projects abroad. His homeland village can be found in Slovakia, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Russia. He also regularly returns to the villages in the Bruntál and Olomouc areas.
He elaborates motifs that he had already taken notice of in the 1980s. However, instead of expressions of the Communist ideology of the day, he follows new, trendy icons. He also works on a number of other thematically-focused collections (The Women’s Prison in Pardubice/Ženská věznice Pardubice, Břevnov Monastery/Břevnovský klašter, The People of Olomouc County/Lidé olomouckého okresu, The Mikulov Area/Mikulovsko, and The Path to Freedom/Cesta k svobodě). At the Institute of Creative Photography of the Philosophical-Natural Sciences Faculty at the Silesian University in Opava he provides artistic leadership for a number of students‘ photographic projects (People of the Hlučín Area in the 1920s/Lidé Hlučínska devadesátých let 20. století, Our World /Náš svět, Zlín and Its People/Zlín a jeho lidé, and recently Opava at the Threshold of a New Millennium/Opava na prahu nového tisíciletí).
