A little bit of the Czech Republic has landed in Canberra.
The exhibition, Love Letters to Bohemia has taken over the walls of Smith's Alternative, featuring black and white photos from Canberra-based, Czech-born photographer Petra Jungmanova.
For Jungmanova, the exhibition is a chance to take people on a journey through the places where she grew up and has been unable to visit for the past three years.
It is also a chance for Jungmanova to celebrate her home country and its culture, which she says is often not in the spotlight in Australia.
"It's a real love expression for the beautiful things that are very unique about my country," she said.
"It's also trying to make a statement and really educate people, not in a patronising way, but it's done from a very intimate personal perspective of knowing these places.
"Ever since I came to Australia when I was 20, I've encountered people feeling genuinely sorry for me for coming from my country - 'Oh, poor you, you come from Czechoslovakia'.
"A lot of that is ignorance because people don't know, we are not Czechoslovakia anymore and that we are a country that is part of the European Union and we do really well and we are a sophisticated society with an incredible cultural heritage and people are sort of discovering it now."
The photos were taken at different locations in Prague, with the hopes of celebrating the city's United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's world heritage status.
This means the images are made up of a lot of cityscapes, with Jungmanova aiming to give them a moody and mysterious feel to them, without trying to make them too edgy.
"I was really lucky to live in there, as a part of my genuine life journey in Czech Republic before I migrated when I was 20," she says.
"I have really personal connection to those places and I have a 15-year-old son, so when we go to Czech now, I take him there, and he experiences them so they become our special places."
As well as being at Smith's Alternative, Love Letters to Bohemia will also make its way to the Sydney Opera House later in the year. There it will be a larger exhibition, featuring more of Jungmanova's photography.
That being said, the photographer says she likes that the exhibition is also being shown in a place such as Smith's Alternative as because the space is also a cafe and bar, it creates a more relaxed feeling to view the work.
"The beauty of being at Smith's Alternative is people can actually sit with those images," Jungmanova says.
"It's not like in the typical gallery spread, which is a bit sterile and you just have a few seconds with each image before you move towards, the next one.
"With this, the average person who goes to Smith's, it's because they're meeting friends catching up for a glass of wine and just relaxing.
"It's just got this really homey, intimate, cute atmosphere. So people can be catching up and looking at those images."
Love Letters From Bohemia is in Smith's Alternative Gallery until the end of February.
