(25. 6. 1875 Slavětín u Chotěboře – 6. 10. 1939 Praha)
Bohumil Vavroušek, a certified teacher for lower secondary education, was one of the first amateur photographers to systematically create photographic documentation of architectural monuments and rural buildings as soon as the first third of the 20th century.
Vavroušek‘s interest in ethnography and vernacular architecture was primarily influenced by his visit to the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague (1895) and the entire process of its preparation.
The sightseeing trips, he made from 1909 became the basis for several guidebooks and articles accompanied by several photographs of architectural monuments, and comments on the appearance of vernacular buildings. His articles, accompanied by high-quality photographs, attracted the attention of art historians, such as Canon Antonín Podlaha, who published a series Posvátná místa království českého [Sacred Places of the Kingdom of Bohemia], to which Vavroušek contributed his photographs. At that time, he also met the young art historian Zdeněk Wirth, who later wrote introductory texts for Vavroušek‘s publications on vernacular buildings.
Vavroušek tried to gather information for his planned inventory of vernacular buildings by sending out questionnaires, but only ten out of 120 were returned. As a result, he had no choice but to literally wander from village to village in search of individual preserved old buildings. At first, he travelled on foot or by bicycle, carrying a large wooden camera and a rucksack full of glass plates. Later, travels by train and bus had to be supplemented, of course, by walking to locations without such connections. He also drove his own car (from 1930), staying in hotels or with his friends and acquaintances during trips lasting several days.
Vavroušek developed a deep affection for Slovakia after his visit (in 1910, with his friend Adolf Wenig) and returned there several times a year. He worked for Slovakia not only as a long-standing executive of the Czechoslavic Unity but also as the author of the first textbooks for Slovak elementary schools. Vavroušek was equally fascinated by the natural beauty and folk culture of Subcarpathian Ruthenia.
Between 1911 and 1936, Vavroušek created most of his photographic documentation across much of the territory that would later form the Czechoslovak Republic. He published some of his photographs in the magazines Zlatá Praha, Český svět, and Světozor, and later in the illustrated books Malebné Slovensko [Picturesque Slovakia] (1920-1923), Dědina [The Village] (1925), Kostel na dědině a v městečku [The Church in a Village and a Small Town] (1929) and Církevní památky na Podkarpatské Rusi [Church Monuments in Subcarpathian Ruthenia] (1929). He also prepared two other large pictorial publications – Městečko [The Small Town], featuring photographs from small towns and examples of technical and public buildings, and Empír v Čechách [The Empire Style in Bohemia], focused on architectural monuments and rural masonry buildings from the first half of the 19th century. However, neither of these works was published, as no publisher was willing to publish them. The print-ready maquettes, stored in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, were irreversibly damaged during the 2002 floods.
Another of Bohumil Vavroušek‘s lifelong interests was the documentation of monuments related to the life and work of national revivalists, writers, and visual artists. He devoted considerable effort to preparing the pictorial Literární atlas Československý [The Literary Atlas of Czechoslovakia] (1932, 1938). This major work was preceded by the two-volume pictorial set České album I. Spisovatelé [Czech Album I. Writers] and České album II. Politikové [Czech Album II. Politicians] (1919). He also served as an editor for several publications dedicated to K. H. Borovský and contributed editorially to publications on J. K. Tyl, K. H. Mácha, F. Táborský, M. R. Štefánik, J. E. Purkyně, and J. Kořenský. He issued several sets of photographic postcards, primarily depicting scenes from Slovakia (1917, 1920) and people in Slovak folk costumes. Vavroušek‘s plans to publish monographs of individual towns and Atlas československých výtvarných umělců [The Atlas of Czechoslovak Visual Artists], for which he had already gathered the necessary materials, were left unfinished due to his death. The book Josef Tulka: román života a dílo [Josef Tulka: A Novel of Life and Work] (1940) was published posthumously.
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