Born on 28th of December 1966 in Prague. Was an established drummer, lyrics writer and co-author of music in a number of Czech mostly hard rock and heavy metal bands. In late nineties, he started to write articles and later publish photographs in Rock&Pop magazine. In 2001 he became an official photographer for a Czech edition of Classic Rock magazine, and subsequently for a monthly Audio Music World magazine, focused on hi-fi technique.
He became a chief photographer and a writer for Rockshock magazine in March 2003, and he’s contributed with photographs and articles to its actual internet version Irockshock.net since.
His full-page photoreports from concerts of big worldwide famous bands such as Queen, Korn, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Deep Purple, Blackmore’s Night, Yngwie Malmsteen or Dresden Dolls made a stable component of a popular musician magazine Muzikus for a few years, his music reviews and interviews regularly appeared in its filial magazine mGuide.
These days Jiri publishes photographs and articles mainly in Slovakian-Czech edition of a prestigious Rock Hard magazine, his pictures appear on a rock radio station Radio Beat’s website, also on web portals t-music.cz, netreporters.org, bestrock.cz, i-legalne.cz, fanonline.cz and in a vast number of other periodics – the most popular magazine focused on heavy music Spark to name one or infamous German mag Metal Hammer.
Jiri closely collaborates with number of concert production agencies, music festival production teams and music venues.
Aside from the concert photoreports, Jiri has created many photoseries of bands for CD booklets and promotion of various bands and projects, such as –123 min., Arakain, Törr, Salamandra, Votchi, 1st Choice, Abraxas, Pangea, Dead Daniels, Ina Urbanová & Hany Bany or HAIR Company Prague. His pictures were used for CD booklets, tourbooks, promo materials and internet by stars such as Jorn Lande, Ken Hensley, Eiríkur Hauksson, Amanda Somerville, Bloodbath, Korpiklaani, Doro Pesch, Saxon, Black Majesty, The Quill, Axxis, Tarot, Theatres des Vampires, Spooky Tooth, Danny Bryant’s Redeyeband, Thunderbolt, Evidence One or Freedom Call.
In autumn 2005, Jiri accomplished his first photograph exhibition called „Rock Twilight Zone“ in Švehlova sokolovna, a functionalist style building created by an architect Ladislav Machoň. The event was followed by an annual exhibition on a music fair trade HUVEL, taking place in Pragues’s Fair Palace, another stable exhibition was seen until recently in a Prague music venue Batalion, the walls of a music instrument shop Akcent in Prague are decorated with blow-ups of famous rock guitarists.
As far as his photographic equipment goes, he uses Canon analog and digital cameras and Canon and Sigma objectiv-lenses.
Nowadays Jiri still cruises concerts and music festivals both in the Czech Republic and abroad. After years of hiatus, he sat on the drum throne again and founded a three piece blues combo The Critics, with his colleagues, musical journalists Tomáš Polívka and Ilja Kučera Jr., playing occassional shows.
(September 2011)
Any use of his photographs or their parts is
subject to the author’s prior approval.
In case you are interested you can contact him by e-mail:
rogl@chello.cz
