Eda Babák: A Moped, Friendship, and a Community Built Through Shared Work

1. 6. 2026

On Thursday, 18 June, Fotograf Zone Gallery will open Babetta 207, an exhibition by Eda Babák, a graduate of the Photography Studio F2 at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). The project follows the restoration of the iconic Czechoslovak moped in a way that extends far beyond technical documentation. It is a story of friendship, shared labour, and a community that takes shape around machines, tools, and grease-stained hands.

The Babetta 207 is a lightweight moped powered by a 49cc single-cylinder two-stroke engine, manufactured in the 1970s by Považské Strojárne in former Czechoslovakia. Originally designed as an affordable means of transport, it has gradually evolved into both a collector’s item and a vehicle for community building. Its mechanical simplicity and endless potential for modification have made it the centre of extensive networks of enthusiasts connected through repairing, tuning, and rebuilding these machines.

The exhibition by Eda Babák, recipient of the 2026 Czech Grand Design Award in the Discovery of the Year category, is rooted in the ongoing restoration of a Babetta undertaken together with his friend Tomáš. Here, the moped is neither merely a technical object nor a nostalgic relic of the past. Instead, it becomes a point of connection between two people from different family and social backgrounds who find a shared language through focused work: patiently dismantling, rebuilding, and bringing a machine back to life. What initially appears to be an ordinary repair project gradually reveals itself as a foundation for friendship, trust, intimacy, and shared experience.

“Babetta 207 is an exhibition about a motorcycle that carries a story of coming of age, masculinity, craftsmanship, and, above all, the need to belong,” explains curator Světlana Malina.

On the ground floor of the gallery, visitors encounter a photographic record of the restoration process itself: studio photographs of individual components, images from the workshop, and close-up views of materials, tools, and various stages of the rebuild. The gallery basement expands the exhibition towards the broader community that has formed around the Babetta. Video projections and audio recordings of conversations with members of this predominantly male subculture capture an environment in which age, background, and life experience give way to a shared fascination with the machine.

The installation explores the tension between the sterile cleanliness of the gallery and the dirty, physical reality of mechanical work. Wooden structures, sheet-metal elements, and even the smell of petrol, metal, and oil disrupt the neutrality of the exhibition space through the tangible presence of the workshop.

Babák’s project also offers a sensitive insight into environments of informal knowledge-sharing, where technical skill becomes a means of human connection. Babetta 207 is a visual project about a moped, but even more importantly, it is a story about friendship—one that emerges not through grand gestures, but through the repeated act of working together.

Eda Babák

Eda Babák’s practice moves naturally between staged and documentary photography, bringing these two approaches together into a visually coherent and distinctive language. Across both genres, he creates technically precise and uncompromisingly sharp images stripped of unnecessary visual noise. His photographs are direct and free from excessive stylisation, while maintaining a recognisable identity and an openness to improvisation, play, and experimentation.

Babák is currently a student in Photography Studio II at UMPRUM under the guidance of Alena Kotzmannová. In 2026, he received the Czech Grand Design Award in the Discovery of the Year category.