Many of the photos here revolve around the popular Prague club Radost FX, where Carrithers worked during the early '90s as the house photographer. It was an ideal vantage point from which to survey the scene. The club functioned as one of the main meeting points in the 1990s between expats and Czechs, and Carrithers’ position gave him access to a wide cross-section of the city’s emerging cultural life. His photographs document that mix, writers, musicians, artists, locals, and even President Václav Havel, at a time when these worlds were beginning to overlap in new ways.
Other photos capture the newly freed city itself and some of its more unusual characters — the “Sword Swallower” and “Devil Man,” for example. These figures seemed to emerge straight out of the post-communist ether, living on the margins while becoming part of the era’s shared memory.
As a young American in Prague himself at the time, Carrithers moved easily among the thousands of Gen-X foreigners who arrived en masse during the '90s to take advantage of the city’s newfound freedoms. These expats created their own demimonde, both alongside and apart from their Czech hosts. They opened clubs and bars, ran cafés and bookstores, staged theater, published newspapers and literary journals, and added an unexpected external dimension to the emerging scene.
More broadly, Carrithers’ work reflects the connections between Prague and two other cities central to his life and career: New York and Berlin, where he also worked. Each city was undergoing its own period of change, and his photography captures the shared energy of those environments without imposing a single narrative.
“I first went to Prague in September 1990,” Carrithers writes. “I was supposed to go for two weeks and return to Berlin. I went back to Berlin two months later. It was then that Prague captured me.”
“Prague is not always a good place for someone from another country to make his or her home,” he writes. “For some it works, but for many others Prague chucks them out and refuses to accept them for one reason or another. It does not work for everyone, but if it does, it’s magic.”
Reflecting on how the city has changed over the past three decades, he writes, “Walking the streets of Prague back then was a different experience. There was less traffic, and there was a sense of optimism in the air… There was a wide variety of street performers and musicians all over the center… [Despite the changes, though,] Prague is still a very special place to live, and I’m inspired by it all the time.”
Find out more about Robert Carrithers at his Instagram page.
(Keep scrolling for more photos.)
Did you like the story and want to add your own experiences? Or maybe help me to correct something I didn’t get right? Write me at bakermark@fastmail.fm.
