June 2 – July 2, 2005
The concept of concerned photographer acquired a new meaning in Streit’s case. He was not a globetrotting reporter who courageously recorded conflicts wherever they occurred, but an idiosyncratic chronicler aiming not at preserving the world he was recording but of changing it by being an integral part of it. He did not think of reconstructing the whole world but wished to participate, not only as a photographer but also as a man of action, in the life of the few villages that represented his home – his world. Unlike the hundreds of reporters who constantly take the resk which springs from their desire to be “on the spot” when dangerous political crises occur (and sometimes pay for it with their lives), Streit is perhaps the only photographer who has ended up in jail on the basis of an arbitrary interpretation of his essentially non-political engagement. He was judged on the basis of his photographs, only some of which were actually exhibited. In the history of photography this seems to be a unique case.
– AntonÌn Dufek