Bedřich Machulka was born on June 22, 1875. Since his youth he had been interested in Africa. However, only after meeting Richard Štorch he was able to realize his dreams. Together they parted for Africa. They settled in Tripolis in Libya and dedicated themselves in hunting and stuffing animals. Afterwards they moved to Sudan where they established a base for hunting expeditions. In the year 1927 Štorch died. Machulka moved his interest to eastern Africa. Since 1929 he had established a partnership with Duke Adolf Schwarzenberg (1890–1950). At the beginning their collaboration went on without problems. However, after Machulka failed to organize film recording in Kenya, the Duke did not entrust him anymore with organizing of other expeditions. This period of life of Machulka, until the year 1935, is well illustrated by letters that he exchanged with the Duke through the Schwarzenberg Office. Schwarzenberg valued Machulka highly for his professional and organizational qualities. Therefore, in spite of the mutual disagreements he found him a place of preserver and curator of small museum of ethnographic artifacts and trophies in the castle Ohrada (on the manor of Hluboká). There Machulka had worked throughout the Second World War until the year 1947, when all the properties of the Schwarzenbergs on the territory of Czechoslovakia were nationalized. Machulka finished his life in Prague in humble conditions. He died on March 6, 1954.
On February 20 of this year, 70 years passed since the death of the traveller, writer, photographer, collectioner and adventurer in the best sense of the word - Enrique Stanko Vráz. His origin and youth have been up to now covered with doubts. The first documents relate only to the first journey of Vráz outside Europe. Since 1880, Vráz lived in Africa - in Marocco, Gambia and on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), where he started to photograph. After a short stay on the Canary Islands he headed for South America and decided to transverse it in the equatorian part. This goal he completed successfully. After this, he travelled between America and Europe, he visited Japan, New Guinea, Thailand, China, Korea, Siberia. Then he again started for South America and for Mexico. During all his trips Vráz made photos. Some of his photographs, preserved today in the Náprstek Museum, are absolutely unique. Vráz perceived photography as a natural media for documentation, he placed its informative value above the emotional. The most frequent topics of his photographs were architecture and its details, nature, landscape and especialy the recordings of the everyday life. These photos have a high documentary value because of the place and the time of origin and also because of the fact that Enrique Stanko Vráz was a sensitive observer that wanted to utilize the photography to informe about the life in the distant, strange lands.