Brno-born RNDr. Miloš Spurný, CSc. (1922-1979) was aphotographer and film-maker, aplant physiologist, abotanist and alandscape ecologist. Between 1945 and 1949 he studied the physiology of plants and philosophy at the Science Faculty of Masaryk University, Brno; from 1948 he was an assistant at the faculty. Forced to leave university in 1955, Spurný worked in the Oil Research Institute, then from 1962 in the Laboratory for the Research of Life Processes Through Film (later taken over by the Botanical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science, Brno). Miloš Spurný carried on the pioneering work of his teacher, Professor Vladimír Úlehla, particularly in the study of germinating plants through cinematography, as well as in an ecological approach to conservation and manipulation of the environment. He wrote a large number of specialist works, while his scientific films, following their subjects over extended periods, won awards abroad. Apart from scientific films, Spurný made documentaries about areas to which he had dedicated considerable time, especially about the Czech-Moravian Highlands and southern Moravia. The film and publication Good-Bye, Old Rivers are dedicated to the landscape now artificially flooded by the waters of the Nové Mlýny reservoirs. Spurný's films will be shown as part of the programme that accompanies the exhibition. Miloš Spurný was aforerunner of today's ecologists and the green movement. He took up photography in 1945. From 1950 he photographed landscape, chiefly in Moravia. Between 1950 and 1979 he participated in around 150 Czech and foreign exhibitions and was awarded numerous prizes in the course of them. In 1965 he established the REKRAFO group (Regional Landscape Photography), together with Pavel Mazal, Milo Černoušek, Jan Baltus and Pavel Spurný. Spurný considered expressions of close acquaintance with specific locations more important than general representations of abstract landscape devoid of actual character and local and chronological relationships. Two particular aspects of Miloš Spurný's photographs stand out. On the one hand, his pictures are some of the most radical executions within creative photography; the landscape in them is transformed into abstract graphic patterns, largely in the spirit of a contemporaneous trend associated with the Expo 58 exhibition in Brussels. On the other hand, Spurný incorporated his profound knowledge of nature and the relationships between society and landscape into his photographs, thus distinguishing himself from other landscape photographers. This dominant part of his oeuvre appears highly topical today, since his pictures are among the first to prioritise ecological matters. Spurný's panoramas, which convey, in abroad sweep, the nature of ecological systems, are particularly remarkable. Together with Josef Sudek and Rudolf Janda, Miloš Spurný was among the most prominent Czech post-war landscape photographers, whose work is currently undergoing its first "updating".
