Just as a photograph preserves traces, so too does the museum’s collection represent imprints of memory—formed not only by images but also by the people who stood at its inception. The genesis of the MUD* collections is linked to its first director, artistic photographer and curator in one, TOMÁŠ FASSATI (1952–2025). Fassati’s ambition to create a representative cross-section of Czech and Slovak photography, with occasional international overlaps, resulted in an extensive gathering of photographs and photographic devices, laying the foundations for today’s sub-collection of photography and sub-collection of design at MUD*.

The exhibition is conceived as a passage through the photo studio and the depository—spaces where photography is created, preserved, and rethought. It is at the same time a journey through time, guiding visitors through the building of the collection. The first room, titled Chamber of Light, draws on Fassati’s idea of developing the educational potential of the collection and actively involving the public. Through equipment for optical and light-based experiments, it offers interaction with the magic of photosensitivity as well as other principles of photography.

In the second room, titled Machines of Light, Iveta Schovancová transforms photographic devices from the design collection into a site-specific installation that links their function with visual reflection. The third room—First Imprint—recalls the daguerreotype, an early form of photography that preserves a unique moment with extraordinary intensity. In the section Book of Images, a selection of works recalls the beginnings of MUD* and the exhibition Nestors of Czech and Slovak Photography. Memory of the Depository reveals the background of the collection, turning the walls of the room into an open archive.

The current exhibition does not focus exclusively on the presentation of collection artifacts. Above all, it is a visual reflection on what photography can show us, what we wish to preserve in it—and how it can speak to us. Not only as an individual image, but also through the reflection of the building of the collection of the Museum of Art and Design.

On the contrary, through many years of research, the artist constantly returns to the medium in order to reevaluate its often problematic position. Through his work, Thýn speaks to the audience in a contemporary visual language and opens up current topics that directly affect it.

Photographer and visual artist Jiří Thýn graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2009, where he studied under Pavel Štecha, who at the time focused mainly on documentary and classical photography. His work was influenced by the university’s cre­ative environment, but above all by the rapid rise of the internet and digital photography at the end of the 2000s. This led not only Thýn, but an entire generation of photographers, to reevaluate their relationship to classical analog photography. A year later, Thýn came to public attention with photographs presented at a group exhibition aptly titled Mutating Medium at Rudolfinum Gallery in Prague. In one interview at the time, the artist stated:
„I try to perceive things in the broadest possible context, not just as a sum of individual parts. I look for symbols around me that, rather than offering answers, inspire further questions and serve as a guide to a better understanding of my own existence.“

Looking at Thýn‘s work over the past fifteen years, we find that these words accurately capture its essence, and in the last three years, they seem to apply twice as much. In the exhibition Saturn’s Shadow, the artist presents his digital photographs in the form of a large-format curtain that guides visitors through the Šíma Hall, or adjusts them into a monumental lightbox without attempting to obscure its original function as an advertising banner. But what is it supposed to draw our attention to? Thýn also presents generated images activated through digital drawing and more intimate prints on glass. He examines how to enter the technical image with an impromptu gesture that would deepen the experience and convey emotion. However, gesture in his work does not only concern form, but also content. For Thýn, it lies within a decision of which images he turns our attention to. The former harmony and calm have been replaced by motifs of destruction and pulsating accumulated energy. Photography as a record of reality seems to have lost its informative value and does not allow for precise articulation of meaning. Perhaps this is why Thýn uses references to well-known works of art or, on a more general level, established iconographic themes that allow him to formulate a message that transcends specific space and time. There is no need to talk at length, a hint is enough. It seems that this unease is common to us all.