Oldřich Bubák
Do šrotu
Polar explorer and photographer Oldřich Bubák once took a job at Kovošrot, a scrapyard in Pardubice. He stayed for six months and came away with a series of photographs of people and machines in a place most of us never get to see.
- Vernissage
- 10 November 2026
- from 6 pm
- Dates
- from 10 November 2026
- [TO FILL IN: closing date]
- Open
- Monday–Friday
- 13:00–17:00
- Other times
- by phone
- Where
- Galerie v Dlouhé
- Dlouhá 39
- Prague 1
- Palác Dlouhá
About the exhibition
This collection of photographs illustrates what happened to me during a particular stretch of my life, when I decided to make a total change, both in the kind of work I did and in the way I photographed. I took a job at the Kovošrot scrapyard in Pardubice, which proved the ideal setting for bringing the two together. I think six months there is long enough to implant yourself in a place, in the organism of a team, to take in the spirit of the space and carry it through photography into two dimensions, and from there to the viewer.
As with every project of mine, for it to have meaning it has to be shared with others. What is more, it crystallised into a wonderful chance to suggest that changing your life is not so complicated after all.
It all revolves around our perception and our wish to use change to reach higher potentials and awaken our true, authentic SELF. Life is simply a dance of energies and of responsibility for our own emotional states, together with the conviction that our happiness does not depend on what others do or say, but entirely on our connection to the “source”. It is this connection to the source energy that lets us move beyond limits and given conditions, and gives us freedom, strength, goodness, love and a sense of purpose and direction, to the point where nothing can stop us reaching a goal or arriving at any place, however utterly, utterly, utterly... improbable.
I would wish everyone to live my story first-hand. A total change of surroundings, different compositions, different colours, different smells, different stories of people...
Become part of it, at least for a moment. I think it is different, other; you will not find stacks of information in it, but the touch of a soul, the soul of an exciting space. A space in which I tried to search for its poetry, and to find it. In the words of my friend, the poet Zdeněk Jirásek:
“...it is more a scent than a word. This story is not read, you step into it.”
So welcome to another of my dreams come true, one that brought real harmony to my world, set it in the right direction and lifted it to higher levels... spiritual ones too.
Yours, Oldřich Bubák
About the photographer
Ing. Oldřich Bubák, MBA
Traveller, photographer, writer, polar explorer, musician and mentor. Born in Pardubice in 1954.
He studied mechanical engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague and went on to work in a string of professions: design engineer, professional musician, teacher, travel agency director, interpreter, tour guide and director of the Pardubice Chamber Philharmonic. And, for six months, a labourer at the Kovošrot scrapyard, where this exhibition was made.
He has visited almost 200 countries and spent several years in total in the polar regions. He was the first Czech to ski to both the North and the South Pole (North Pole Light Expedition 1996, South Pole Millennium Expedition 1999), and he sailed the Northwest Passage, Amundsen’s route through the Canadian Arctic.
He has held more than 180 photography exhibitions. At the 2017 World Photographic Cup he won bronze in the reportage category for a picture of bricklayers on a building site in Mníšek pod Brdy. The Czech Association of Professional Photographers named him a Personality of Czech Photography, and he received the Media Award at the Personality of the Pardubice Region ceremony.
He has written more than ten books, from the travelogue “Touches of the Ends of the World” (2004), which won an award at the Go Kamera festival, to “The Kingdom of Lo / Mustang” (2005), written at the request of the King of Mustang. He gives around 150 talks a year to schools, companies and seniors, and through Danebad, the Czech-Nepalese society he founded in 2000, he supports schools in Nepal.
- photography exhibitions
- 180+
- poles, both reached on skis
- 2
- talks a year
- 150
- bronze at the World Photographic Cup
- 2017
Among king penguins 
Photographing in a Buddhist monastery 
Island Peak, Nepal
Photographs: Oldřich Bubák archive
Come to the vernissage
10 November 2026
from 6 pm
- Dates
- from 10 November 2026
- [TO FILL IN: closing date]
- Open
- Monday–Friday
- 13:00–17:00
- Other times
- by phone
- Where
- Galerie v Dlouhé
- Dlouhá 39
- Prague 1
- Palác Dlouhá