As the anniversary of the Prague Spring was approaching, Gilles Caron went to Czechoslovakia with Raymond Depardon to document an anticipated event, which was promising its share of demonstrations and confrontations. The harsh repression prepared by the regime quickly ended the outburst, but the media coverage, particularly through images, enshrined it in contemporary memory and linked it to the revolts that shook the Western world at the same period.

Czechoslovakia was under strain, at the end of August 1969: the anniversary of the country invasion by the Warsaw Pact troops, which had ended the Prague Spring (January 5 1968-August 21 1968) was around the corner. It was promising its share of demonstrations and confrontations between a youth wishing for freedom and emancipation and the law enforcement in favour of the government. Thus the event was awaited by the media which had been preparing for it, the youth in protest trying to organise it, but also by the regime’s forces getting into battle order, in the view to suppress it as quickly as possible. 1969 was a year of growing tensions, culminating in August. Alexander Dubček (1921-1992), First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, who had come to power during the Prague Spring and who had initiated reforms while maintaining a balance with the Soviets, was replaced at the head of the party in April 1969 and then radically ousted.

1969 was a year of growing tensions, culminating in August. Alexander Dubček (1921-1992), First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, who had come to power during the Prague Spring and who had initiated reforms while maintaining a balance with the Soviets, was replaced at the head of the party in April 1969 and then radically ousted. Just when it seemed that the situation was easing, heralding a new world of freedom, the tightening of the grip on power led to purges, the dissolution of movements that had played a role in the Prague Spring and the cancellation of reforms introduced in January 1968. All these deprivations and tightening of the grip on power, which signalled the end of the liberalisation following the Spring of 1968 and forced some people into exile, constituted an operation known as « normalisation ».

On January 16 1969, Jan Palach, a student, set himself on fire, generating considerable public sympathy thus telling the Czechoslovak people’s disapproval of the new political order. As the anniversary of the Prague Spring was approaching, the long-suppressed protests of people missing Dubček’s ‘socialism with a human face’ and rejecting Stalinist doctrine, were about to resurface.

For several days and nights from August 21 1969 until the order was restored, clashes took place in the city of Prague where Gilles Caron was with Raymond Depardon. The repression was extensive and very violent: the regime mobilised tanks, used tear gas and tried to disperse crowds as soon as they formed, in particular by chasing down demonstrators who wanted to stand up to the forces of order. Among the young people, there were gestures, attitudes and dress codes that linked the movement to the international protest that had been shaking the Western world since 1968.

Gilles Caron’s report from Prague clearly reveals the community of spirit that links the Czechoslovak people – and in particular young people – to the contemporary struggle for emancipation. Gilles Caron picks out indicators of this connection, for example by photographing from the back a young demonstrator who, sitting on the ground facing a row of soldiers, arms raised and fingers forming a ‘V’, is wearing a jacket on which is written ‘I want love’, as if echoing the American hippy wave. The photograph of another young man, his arms folded, staring defiantly at the bayonet of a soldier just a few centimeters away, was part of this now international imaginary and gave the protest movement an acknowledgement in the eyes of Western opinion. The barricades built from rubbish bins and all kinds of debris are also reminiscent of the Parisian conflict of May-June 1968, which Caron saw and documented first-hand.

The photojournalist also returned to some of the subjects he had covered in the past, for example the peasant demonstrations in northern France in 1967: groups of men shouting in chorus, fists raised, nurturing the image of a proletarian uprising, against a government and a higher authority (the Soviet Union) that claimed to represent the proletariat.

However, working conditions were very difficult, as the regime tried to pretend that nothing was happening: Caron reported that the presence of plainclothes policemen and the violence of the forces of law and order in general prevented him from doing his work, and that he had to make images « on the sly », hiding in plain sight. The images themselves bear witness to this, being sometimes blurred or badly exposed. Always meticulous and committed, Caron nevertheless brought back almost 500 shots. He managed to get them across the border in a car with Raymond Depardon, posing as tourists with the film hidden in the bodywork of the vehicle.

1969, Prague, Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, Czechia, Prague Spring, Soviets, USSR, Russia, law enforcement, revolution, revolt, rioting, strikes, soldiers, army…