Markéta Luskačová was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1944, where she studied Sociology of Culture at the Charles University and later took a postgraduate course in photography at The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU). <em>Pilgrims</em> (1964–71), her best known photographic series, was first exhibited in Prague in 1971, bringing her early international acclaim. In 1975 Luskačová immigrated to England, where she has continued working extensively as a photographer.
Photographer Markéta Luskačová was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) on 29 August 1944. She studied Sociology of Culture at Charles University, Prague (1961-67), where her thesis focused on religion in what is now modern-day Slovakia. While a student, she met a group of pilgrims travelling to the city of Levoča and returned over several years, documenting surviving cultural and religious traditions through her photography. She subsequently took a postgraduate course in photography at The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU, 1966–69). Luskačová began working as a freelance photographer in 1968. Her Pilgrims photographs (1964–71), the outcome of her research in Slovakia, were first exhibited in Prague in 1971, where they were seen by Colin Osman, editor of Creative Camera, who was visiting from London. His magazine subsequently published Luskačová's photographs, bringing her work to international attention. In 1970-71, she photographed the stage productions of Divadlo za branou (Theatre Beyond the Gate) in Prague. Founded in 1965 by director Otomar Krejča, the theatre was banned by the ruling Communist Party in 1972.
In 1971, Luskačová married the poet Franz H. Wurm, a Prague native who was also a British citizen. He left Czechoslovakia out of fear of 'normalization' following the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968. Luskačová sought permission to visit her husband abroad and eventually immigrated to London, England, in 1975. In London, Luskačová discovered new inspiration for her work in the city's markets, especially those of Brick Lane and Spitalfields in the East End. She photographed these areas and their residents over decades. As she shared in an interview with Dean Brierly: 'I have not found in London any other better place to comment on the sheer impossibility of human existence'. Asked why she settled in London, she replied: 'My reasons [...] were several. Let’s name one: I love London.' (Dean Briely, 'Markéta Luskačová: A Photographic Pilgrimage', Photographers Speak blog, 11 November 2010). Between 1976 and 1980, Luskačová was a Nominee Photographer for the Magnum Photo agency, for whom she produced Chiswick Women’s Aid 1976-77. She photographed in the shelter (now known as Refuge) while pregnant with her son Matthew Killip, printing the 12 copies of each picture required by Magnum a week before giving birth. However, the photographs remained unpublished until 2020 when they became the focus of a publication by Café Royal Books. In 1976 Luskačová was in north-east England, visiting the photographer Chris Killip (father of her son), where she photographed Whitley Bay and its visitors. She was drawn back to the same location in 1978 when Amber, a celebrated film and photography collective based in Newcastle, invited her to photograph the seasides of the north-east, alongside Martine Franck, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Paul Caponigro. She also made numerous visits to Ireland, where she photographed religious pilgrims, Travellers, children and street musicians. Soon after the Velvet Revolution restored democracy to Czechoslovakia at the end of 1989, Luskačová was invited to mount an exhibition at the Levoča Museum in Slovakia, where in the summer of 1990 she displayed her Pilgrims series. She subsequently worked in the Czech Republic, while also continuing to take photographs in Britain, Slovakia and Poland, concentrating in particular on photographing children.
Luskačová's photographs have been the subject of over forty international solo exhibitions, including an exhibition of her Pilgrims series at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1983 and her photographs of British children at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in 1989. In 1991, Luskačová had a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, showing a selection of her photographs taken at the East End markets, which further cemented her reputation as a vital photographic talent. In 2019 her works dedicated to the north-eastern seaside were exhibited at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol and at Kestle Barton in Cornwall, with a selection of her photographs on view at Tate Britain in the same year. Luskačová lives and works in London. Her work is held in numerous public collections in the UK, including the Arts Council, Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate, and National Portrait Gallery in London, and the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford.