Jitka Hanzlová (1958, Náchod, Czechoslovakia; currently Czech Republic) was awarded refugee status in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1983, a year after leaving the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. Between 1987 and 1994 she studied communication technology at the University of Essen and began her first project, Rokytnik, centered on the homonymous town in Bohemia, where she grew up.

Exile has influenced the work of Jitka Hanzlová, which revolves around the relationship between individuals and their context and how it influences the construction of personal identity. Her subtle photographs featuring restrained color and careful framing are grouped into series such as Bewohner (1994-1996), which explores solitude, isolation, and the loss of one’s roots in large urban areas; Forest (2000-2005), centered on the forest of her childhood; and Brixton (2002), made as a result of an invitation from the Photographers’ Gallery, in which she portrays Afro-Caribbean women who live in the Brixton district of London.

Hanzlová has been a guest professor at the Fine Arts Academies in Hamburg and Zürich. Since the mid 1990s she has been awarded numerous prizes: the Otto Steinert prize in 1993; the European Photography prize, and the DG Frankfurt Bank Grant in 1995; Citibank Photography Prize runner-up in 2000 and 2003; and the BMW-Paris Photo Prize for Contemporary Photography in 2004.