JAROSLAV PONCAR

Jaroslav Poncar, born in Prague in 1945, studied atomic physics in his
hometown and later theoretical physics in Aachen, Germany. He was a professor
of optics and physics at the Department of Photo Engineering in Cologne,
Germany, from 1973 to 2004.

He worked as a freelance photographer for the German Press Agency (DPA)
in Africa and the Middle East in the early 1970s. Starting in 1974, he traveled
extensively, mainly through the Himalayas, Tibet, India, and Cambodia,
specializing in panorama photography from 1976 on. In cooperation with various
universities and museums he documented numerous cultural monuments in these
regions, among others the wall paintings in the Alchi temples, the reliefs of Angkor
Wat, and the cave paintings in the Kingdom of Mustang.

For LUMEN, Jaroslav Poncar has put together a photographic journey spanning
four decades and four continents.