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Untitled, from the series T-Club

Untitled, from the series T-Club
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    • Untitled, from the series T-Club
    • Bez názvu, ze série T-Club
  • 1984
  • b&w photograph
  • 19,8 × 30 cm
“T-Club” is a large-scale documentary series on Prague’s eponymous underground gay club. This club was located at the very center of town, in the basement of a historic building on Jungmannovo náměstí. There, Jarcovjáková managed to capture the nascent LGBTQ+ culture of a socialist country. While homosexual sex was not punishable in Czechoslovakia, people could get into trouble for being openly gay. These pictures present a culture quite distinct from the well-known documentations of Western gay clubs. Here, unlike elsewhere, gay men partied together with lesbian women. Though the club did have an official permit to operate, it became a hub for the city’s growing underground subcultures. T-Club was under constant observation by the secret police and under threat of police raids, which could have dangerous consequences for its patrons. It is for this reason that Jarcovjáková’s series depicting these parties is so precious: it is a documentation of the one of those rare spaces where non-heteronormative identities could be performed in a late-socialist country. D.M.