In After Kytice, Martijn explores his personal connection to a small village in North Bohemia, Czech Republic, where his parents bought a house in 2005. After two decades of revisiting this place, he approached the village not as a holiday destination, but as a living community, rediscovering its landscapes, traditions, and people from a new perspective. The project explores the rhythms of the Czech countryside, where seasonal rituals and traces of the past live on in both nature and its people. Inspired by Karel Jaromír Erben's poetry collection Kytice (1853), the project connects folklore, personal memories and present-day observations, moving between myth and reality.

“The village is more used to outsiders now. There’s a guesthouse, and more holiday homes than back then. You were welcomed with open arms as a young family.”

Edition © 2026 Rust Publishing

ISBN 978-83-981360-0-6 

Photography & text: Martijn Schmidt 

Editing: Martijn Schmidt, Heiner L. Beisert, Jakub Szachnowski

Design: Doğa Gönüllü, Jakub Szachnowski

Printing & binding: Skleniarz

DTP: Tomasz Kubaczyk

Paper: Garda Pat Kiara, Crush Coffee 

Edition: 600 

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