ONE:LOVE TENNIS GARDEN PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
Photographer: Radka Leitmeritz
30.5.2023 – 30.7.2023

Exhibition information

Radka Leitmeritz, ONE:LOVE by Court Supremes
Tennis Garden – The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, 30 May – 30 July 2023
I dedicate ONE:LOVE to love, the grandest courage in the world.
I dedicate ONE:LOVE to my tennis muses, my incredible source of inspiration.
I dedicate ONE:LOVE to their strength and motivation to win in a sport where week after week, only one can win and the others lose. Whatever that love is, it is always worth fighting for.

Radka Leitmeritz

Between 2019 and 2022, photographer Radka Leitmeritz created a series of portraits of nine inspiring women from Czech tennis history: Martina Navrátilová, Hana Mandlíková, Helena Suková, Barbora Strýcová, Petra Kvitová, Karolína Plíšková, Barbora Krejčíková, Karolína Muchová, and Markéta Vondroušová.

Radka meets her muses at tournaments and at training and portrait photography sessions. Her artwork captures their inner and outer beauty. She talks with them intimately about love for themselves and their closest, their sport, audience, and nation. The book ONE:LOVE is a visual statement of an art photographer, arched by a sensitive superstructure of comments by nine strong female fighters with a tennis racket in their hands.

The “Tennis Garden” exhibition, based on the book ONE:LOVE, presents portraits of great women from two generations of Czech tennis history but also nostalgic photographs of old clubrooms and courts where time has stood still.

The photographic medium serves Radka Leitmeritz to look at life in an often unexpected way; her works betray a mature poetic sense for the (un)ordinariness of situations, composition details, and the visual. ONE:LOVE is a distinctive account of a fateful love for tennis, recorded through places and figures associated with the magnificent game and its atmosphere.

The native of Litoměřice (Leitmeritz in German) got into photography in high school. Later, she worked in Munich, Paris, and New York. In Paris, she met the German photographer Rene Hallen and they formed the artistic duo, Radka & Rene. She became the first ever Czech author (under the R+R label as well as alone) of fashion editorials in Czech and international magazine editions (Vogue, Wallpaper, W, Vanity Fair, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Harper’s Bazaar, L’Officiel, Elle, Numero, InStyle, New York Magazine, and others), extensive lifestyle campaigns, as well as art units.

A decade ago, Radka & Rene relocated to Los Angeles, where they created countless portrait photographs of Hollywood stars and a vast bulk of material for movie posters. Their portrait of Nicole Kidman (Power of Women) for Variety magazine earned them the American Press award for the 2013 Cover of the Year. They have directed several music videos, including for the iconic Italians Do It Better music label, the Chromatics, Glass Candy, and Desire bands, and Johnny Jewel’s soundtrack for the new Twin Peaks series by David Lynch.

Since 2019 – already solo – Radka has been working on the Court Supremes project, dedicated to the most distinguished tennis figures, which develops in cooperation with the Women’s Tennis Association and the Porsche brand, a long-time women’s world tennis supporter. Tennis heroines and the tennis milieu remain in her focus – she is now preparing a campaign for Wimbledon and is about to embark on a global tour with Court Supremes.

Press Conference / National Theather / 24.2.2022

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