I started photographing at fourteen, but the moment I truly committed to photography and understood what I wanted dates back to the first half of the 1980s. I was part of the unofficial photography scene, spent a lot of time documenting tramping culture and social activities on the margins, and collaborated with samizdat publications such as Revolver Revue, Lidové noviny, Sport, and others. During the 1989 revolution, I was commissioned by the student agency Radost, founded by FAMU students, to photograph the inauguration of the future president Václav Havel.

That single inauguration led to an intense period of photographing Havel in his role as head of state (December 1989 – July 1992). I photographed him regularly and with varying degrees of access until his passing. This pivotal theme, which shaped not only my professional life, was later revisited with distance and resulted in the publication of the extensive book “Václav Havel – Tomki Němec, Photographs.” In 2016, on what would have been his 80th birthday, I exhibited sixty large-format photographs from this series at the gallery of modern art DOX under the title “HAVEL.”

In the early 1990s, after the borders opened, I began collaborating with the photography agency "Agence VU" in Paris, and in 1992 I became a staff photographer for Anzenberger Agency in Vienna. In the newly open world, I was finally able to photograph and publish not only in Czechoslovakia. It was a time when reportage and documentary photography still had strong space. I worked with publications such as Libération, Le Monde, Paris Match, Stern, Der Spiegel, DU, Geo, Die Zeit, Focus, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Newsweek, and many others.

As an ambitious young photographer from a newly opened country eager to make his mark, I received several awards, including World Press Photo (1991, 1994), Grant Kultur Kontakt Austria, Pro Helvetia, IVO, CPP, and others. After November 1989, I also began collaborating with local editorial offices, publishing houses, periodicals, and foundations. Among Czech publications, I worked most notably with the weekly Respekt, where my collaboration had already begun during its samizdat period.

In 2018, I co-founded the photographers’ association “400ASA.”

One of my most recent long-term projects, developed during the COVID years (2020–2022), was a collaboration with director Viktor Tauš on the project Amerikánka and "Film Naživo" culminating in the photography book “Amerikánka, Etc.”

In 2025, I returned to my archive to prepare a new photography book dedicated to Karel Schwarzenberg, which I would like to publish independently in 2027. For me, it is a way of preserving the memory of a person and a friend to whom I had a deep personal connection.

I devote myself to photography as I once dreamed. I am free, independent, and happy to photograph what truly interests me.

All the best to you.

Tomki Němec