Černé roky presents the raw photographic and literary diaries, from 1971 to 1987, of the important Czech underground photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková. The book wrings out the black-and-white everydayness of normalisation-era Prague, reveals both the beauty and the squalor of the time, and offers a glimpse into her later remarkable life as an emigrant in West Berlin and Tokyo. It is an experiment in editorial approach that gives equal weight to her photographic and her literary work, so that the result oscillates wildly between a classic monograph and intimate diary entries. In its rawness and authenticity it is a singular portrait of an unyielding artist in her wild years. Jarcovjáková always lived in extremes: she lived in pubs, worked night shifts in a printing house, went through countless lovers, male and female, photographed in semi-legal gay clubs and even taught Czech to Cubans and Vietnamese, while moving in the highest art circles.