Adolf Zika was born in 1972 in the town of Prachatice. In 1994, he began with photography
and a year later won first place in the most contended category of the Czech Press
Photo. In the fall of the year 2000, he was selected among six photographers of
the world to represent the renowned brand Leica at Photokina in Cologne and was
given the same honor by the Olympus brand four years later. Adolf Zika’s photographs
were already sold at the Paris Photo in Louvre and many other countries throughout
the world.
He is the author of the largest printed project of the year 2000, the narrative
publication THE LAST BOOK OF THE CENTURY, A Day in the Life of
Czech Republic. In the summer of 2006, with the support of the Hasselblad
and Leica companies, he took photographs for his planned publication
6 Days and 24 Hours of Le Mans, a non-traditional conception of the most
famous automobile race in the world. And in the same year, a retrospective book
of black-and-white photographs Luxurious Luminescence
appeared on counters in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Adolf Zika worked for many prestigious fashion labels, such as Pietro Filipi, Hermès,
Australian Bodycare, Speedo and many other. In 2001, Adolf Zika began long-term
cooperation with the mobile operator Orange. He has also created many front covers
and beautiful pictorials for the Playboy magazine. From the year 2001 till 2005,
Adolf Zika became the official photographer of the racing team Ferrari Menx, with
whom he traveled throughout Europe.
Since 2001, Adolf Zika has directed over three dozen television commercials. He
yet again dedicated himself to the world of fast cars in 2006 and 2007, while working
on the project A1GP Season 2006/07. The result of which
is an extensive photographic publication, capturing the dramatic moments of the
A1GP season as well as a peek behind the scenes of every race.
In the year 2007, as the screenwriter and director, he completed a feature length
documentary film about world renowned photographer Jan Saudek, titled
JAN SAUDEK - TRAPPED BY HIS PASSIONS, NO HOPE FOR RESCUE. The film was
completed as a Czech-American co-production. In the following year, the film was
awarded the Glass Eye Award for the Best Documentary Film at EuroFest Montreal in
Canada.
In the same year, Adolf Zika directed a feature length documentary film about the
most famous automobile race in the world 24 Hours of Le Mans entitled
LE MANS PHENOMENON.
In 2009, ONE YEAR OF MY LIFE in 3285 Pictures by Adolf Zika in Co-operation with Leica was published, a worldwide
unique photography project, which illustrates one year of the ordinary as well as extraordinary life of Adolf Zika in
nine photographs a day. Based on the main idea of this book, in the same year he founded the web project WEEK OF LIFE,
a unique documentary project, which aims to create the largest photo library of humanity.
Adolf Zika still considers himself photographer of black-and-white photography and
is an enthusiastic collector of black-and-white classic photography. Zika’s black-and-white
photographs, mainly artistic nudes, are enlarged using a classic technique, and
always shot on a negative and never digitally retouched. They are not influenced
by modern techniques and it is difficult to place a date on the vast majority of
Adolf Zika’s photography. This might be the reason he is a sought-after photographer
for personal collections. On his journeys for unique photographs, Adolf Zika has
traveled to over 47 different countries all over the world.
