Prague in March 1991, a photographic return to a city in transition
A few weeks after first discovering Prague in February 1991, I returned specifically to spend more time exploring and photographing the city. I hired a car in Paris and set off again for Czechoslovakia. Markets, shops, passers-by, Wenceslas Square and the first Western signs reveal a capital still only lightly transformed by the market economy, just over a year after the Velvet Revolution.
My first discovery of Prague, in February 1991, had lasted only a few hours before an assignment for L’Automobile Magazine about Tatra. The city had made enough of an impression on me to make me want to return almost immediately.
In March, I hired a Renault 5 in Paris and set off for Czechoslovakia. After around ten hours on the road, I arrived in the evening at the same modern four-star hotel on the outskirts of the city where I had stayed during my previous visit.
Prices had increased on 1 March, and this time I found myself in a tiny room with a single bed. The following morning, I headed into central Prague and decided to change hotels.
On Václavské náměstí, Wenceslas Square, I booked a room for two nights at the Hotel Europa. The hotel had the atmosphere of a slightly faded former grand hotel, and my room overlooked the square.
My room at the Hotel Europa, Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
Photographing Prague for myself
A few months earlier, at the end of December 1990, I had switched professionally to the Canon EOS-1, which was particularly advanced in terms of autofocus at the time. I had sold my two motor-driven Nikon FM2 bodies along with some of my Nikkor lenses.
I had nevertheless kept my Nikon F and several older lenses, to which I had added a second-hand Nikkor 18mm f/4.
For this personal trip, I left my Canon reporting equipment at the agency. I travelled with the Nikon F fitted with its plain, non-metered prism for black-and-white photography, and a Nikon FM loaded with colour film.
Looking at the negatives again today, a fairly clear difference emerges between the two approaches. My black-and-white photographs focus more on the streets, inhabitants, shops and the relationship between people and their surroundings. Some of the colour transparencies reflect more strongly the habits I had acquired while working with stock photo agencies, with descriptive views that could be used to illustrate Prague, its squares and monuments.
The often grey weather was not particularly well suited to the colourful tourist images these agencies were looking for. It worked much better for black and white.
An 18mm lens for street photography
I often used the Nikkor 18mm to include people in my photographs while keeping their surroundings in the frame.
With an ultra-wide-angle lens, people positioned near the edge of the frame rarely imagine that they are part of the photograph. I could prepare my composition while apparently looking at a façade or shop window, then include them when I raised the camera to my eye. Their behaviour therefore remained natural.
Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
My aim was to photograph a street, a shop and the way it was used in everyday life, with the people who brought the scene to life. I wanted to show the city as it functioned, without turning its inhabitants into curiosities.
Using the 18mm had another consequence. In narrow streets or in front of large buildings, there was often very little room to step back. To fit the whole building into the frame, I had to tilt the camera upwards, resulting in converging verticals.
Looking at these photographs today through the eyes of an architectural photographer, those perspectives are obvious. I chose to preserve the images as they are: they are also part of the way I worked in 1991 and of the documentary value of these photographs.
Shops and everyday life
What interests me today in these photographs extends far beyond the monuments.
In the streets of the city centre, residents shop for food and everyday goods. International chains and shops aimed at mass tourism still occupy little space in the commercial landscape.
I photograph cake shops, grocery stores, markets and their customers. The shop windows and interiors are generally simple, but the shelves are well stocked.
In one of these shops, there is very little light. With the Nikon F, I remove the prism so that I can look directly down onto the focusing screen. With the camera strap around my neck, I push the camera downwards to stabilise it and allow me to shoot at a slow shutter speed.
This technique also has the advantage of being discreet.
Grocery store, Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
I want to photograph the shop, its well-stocked shelves and its customers in their everyday environment. The people provide scale and show how the place is used; they remain part of the scene rather than becoming its subject.
Markets, Easter and culture in the streets
With Easter approaching, market stalls offer painted eggs, decorated branches and long colourful ribbons.
Easter decorations at a market, Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
On Old Town Square, craft stalls attract more people than in the surrounding streets. I photograph, among others, a craftsman engraving Bohemian crystal.
Around the monument to Jan Hus, many people are sitting. Nothing in the photographs makes it possible to determine with certainty whether they are Prague residents or visitors.
Jan Hus Monument, Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
Culture is also highly visible throughout the city: posters, exhibitions, performances, bookshops and music. It had already struck me during my first visit in February and becomes even more apparent during this second stay.
I buy several illustrated books and classical music records to give as presents when I return to France. I also find a Flexaret, a Czechoslovak twin-lens medium-format camera.
At the time, I was inclined to see this as the expression of a society in which creativity and culture had provided important spaces for personal life during decades of political control.
Wenceslas Square between two eras
Wenceslas Square occupies a particular place in my visual memory. Josef Koudelka’s photographs taken during the invasion of Prague by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968 had permanently associated this location with the recent history of Czechoslovakia.
In March 1991, the change in the economic system sometimes appears through much more ordinary details.
In one of my colour transparencies, a work platform is positioned against a building while workers install a large FIAT logo on the roof. The long square is still relatively free of Western advertising signs.
Wenceslas Square, Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
With time, this photograph has become more interesting because of this detail than because of the cityscape itself: a Western brand is literally being installed in the urban landscape.
In the evening, from the window of my room at the Hotel Europa, I photograph the square in the rain. The trams, cars, the Melantrich and Svobodné slovo signs and the reflections on the wet road show another side of Prague.
Wenceslas Square from my room at the Hotel Europa, Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
From old Prague to the Castle
I also explore the places that naturally attract visitors: Old Town Square, Charles Bridge, Malá Strana and the streets leading uphill towards Prague Castle.
Tourism already exists, particularly around Charles Bridge, where a few artists display their drawings and paintings. Visitor numbers, however, bear little comparison with the crowds Prague would experience in the decades that followed.
Charles Bridge towards Prague Castle, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
As I walk through the streets, I also photograph rows of cars, cobblestones, façades, trams and urban perspectives. With time, these ordinary elements have become as interesting as the monuments themselves.
Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
I eventually reach Prague Castle, where I photograph the monumental entrance with its two guards.
Palace guards, Prague, March 1991 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
Stock photographs that became documents
My approach to colour photography was still influenced by stock photo agencies at the time.
In 1987, when I was living in Lille, I had placed my travel photographs with Diaphor. These agencies were the physical equivalent of today’s digital stock image libraries. They stored and classified transparencies and distributed printed catalogues to the press, advertisers and communication agencies.
In 1990, I joined Cosmos.
The way these agencies operated encouraged photographers to build very broad archives. When a client needed a photograph to illustrate a particular subject, the agency had to be able to offer several possibilities immediately. We therefore also took photographs when the light or conditions were far removed from those we would have chosen for personal work.
Some of my colour transparencies of Prague clearly belong to this approach.
My more personal series, such as those photographed at White Sands in New Mexico, reflected a different photographic standard.
Thirty-five years later, however, this stock photography practice has produced an unexpected benefit. Images originally made simply for their documentary potential show details I might otherwise never have photographed.
Shops, cars, signs, clothes, markets and street furniture have become clues to a particular period.
After a few days, I left Prague and returned to France through the former East Germany.
Photographs that tell a different story with time
In March 1991, I returned to Prague because I wanted to explore and photograph a city that had made a strong impression on me a few weeks earlier.
Looking again today at the black-and-white negatives and colour transparencies, I find two complementary approaches: a more personal kind of photography centred on people and their surroundings, and more descriptive photography inherited from my work with stock photo agencies.
With time, the boundary between the two has become less important.
The most interesting images often show things that seemed entirely ordinary when I took them: a shop, a market scale, parked cars, a sign being installed, a hotel room or a few people walking along a street.
Today, they form a record of Prague observed at a very particular moment in its history, a few months after the end of Communist rule and at the beginning of the transformations that would profoundly change the city.
Thirty-five years later, in February 2026, I returned to Prague once again.
About the author
Sebastien Desnoulez is a photographer, author and image maker based in Paris. His work spans architectural photography, landscape photography and travel photography, with particular attention to composition, lines, light, blur and visual accidents. Trained in photography in the mid-1980s, he covered Formula 1 and reported from around the world before developing a fine art photography practice built around the tension between graphic rigour and visual instability. He also shares his technical experience through practical articles for passionate photographers, drawing on a strong visual culture acquired in both film and digital photography.
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