Born in 1945 in Prague, Poncar grew up in Litomerice, North Bohemia and studied technical and nuclear physics at the Technical University of Prague from 1962 to 1966. He left Czechoslovakia in 1966 to study in Aachen (West Germany), completing his PhD in theoretical physics in 1971.

He started his career as a photographer for the German Press Agency in Africa and Arabia in 1972 but accepted an optics professorship at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne in 1973, from which he retired in 2010. As of 1977, he worked with Wolfgang Kohl on documentaries for German TV in Yemen, Mali, India, Pakistan and Tibet. This took him to Nepal in 1980, the year he produced the two panoramic photographs of Deopatan and Bhaktapur.

In 1995, he came to Nepal to join Niels Gutschow for an inventory of Buddhist votive architecture, and in 1996, he joined Robert Powell and Roberto Vitali in a bid to document the architectural heritage of Mustang, an interdisciplinary research project in the Himalayas financed by the German Research Council (DFG). Poncar returned to Mustang in 1997 and 1998 (documentation of wall paintings of Thubchen and Champa Lakhang in Lo Manthang for the American Himalayan Foundation) and again in 2010. In 2015, Poncar joined Christian Luczanits to Upper Mustang for the documentation of old manuscripts. He was a part of the team in 2016 and the following year as well. Poncar’s many documentary surveys of the wall paintings of Alchi, Ladakh (1981-84), Tabo, Spiti (1984), Toling, Guge (Tibet, 1993), Turfan (China, 1993), his long-standing documentation of the ruins of Angkor (1996-2005), his journeys through Burma (2003-07) and his work in Afghanistan (2011-12) are eloquent testimonies to his life-long dedication, with Nepal, India, Tibet and Cambodia at the heart of it.

“Why did I travel to Mustang always in July and August when the monsoon culminates, when it is uncertain to get by plane to Jomosom, when the high mountains are hidden behind heavy clouds and so on? I travel on purpose for photography and the best time is when I can make best pictures and not enjoy best weather.

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