LAB EAST 30 photographic positions from Central and Eastern Europe

LAB EAST
30 photographic positions from Central and Eastern Europe
30 photographic positions from Central and Eastern Europe
Edited by Horst Kloever | photeur.net
2010
First edition
Berlin, Germany 2010
Published by
Horst Kloever | photeur.net
Printed with the friendly support of blurb,
the creative publishing platform.
Media partner:
Fotografia Quarterly, Poland
Copyright notice: © Horst Kloever, photeur.net and the
respective authors of all photographs and texts in this
book.
© All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying and recording
without the written permission of Horst Kloever | photeur.
net | Berlin, Germany or the respective authors of the
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Foreword.
Please allow me to go through the political phases
you might expect here in fast forward mode:
LAB EAST presents artists from post communist
societies, defines their biographical difference,
and wants to create a common cultural space for
exchange of views and ideas, thereby bridges
a divide between East and West – so far so
good. This topic treated I can proceed to writing
about photography and my experience travelling
eastbound.
Just a few facts about the pictures and artistic
concepts you will find from page 20 onwards.
These were taken and created by 30 artists from
13 countries. The choice is the outcome of cooperation for the last five years. The main criteria
are quality and stamina of the artists, not equal
representation of all the nations of the centre and
east of Europe. Russia is a vast and vastly different
field that shall be covered in a future publishing
endeavour, same as the far southeast of Europe
such as Turkey. So the wingspan of this project is
from Estonia to Albania, overflying borders, some
of which are still difficult to cross physically. Online
communication made the exchange easy, the
choice of Blurb as a truly international platform
for the printed book is coherent to its production
conditions.
Many thanks to:
Horst Kloever
[email protected]
And to all the highly motivated and committed
artists and authors gathered here.
Walter Keller (curator, publicist and gallery owner,
Zurich, Switzerland) for enabling the LABOR OST
exhibition in May 2010 in Zurich, Switzerland. The
show was organised and funded by Zurich based
Gerber & Keller GmbH, a company specialising in
photography projects. A glimpse of the exhibition
can be seen at easternphotoworks.com. Walter
Keller contributed invaluable advice to the project.
Katarzyna Majak (artist and author, also member
of the editorial board of Fotografia Quarterly,
Poland) for her brilliant essay, encouragement and
commitment.
Dr. Anne Meuter (researcher and author) was in
charge of artist liaison, wrote and took care of the
layout. Without her this book would not exist.
[email protected]
Anna Nowak (art historian and curator) for
sophisticated thoughts about five of the positions
in this book.
Marie-France Rafael (art historian and author) for
her intelligent words and steadfast support.
Contents
2
Trapped? | Walter Keller
5
Grand Tour Grotesque | Horst Kloever
16
‘In Eastern Europe – that is to say, nowhere?’ | Katarzyna Majak
20
Arnis Balcus | Collective Amnesia
28
Bownik | Gamers
36
Vanja Bucan | Epilogue
44
Kristina Erdei | Singles
52
Peter Fabo | A Place, a Person and a Thing
60
Bevis Fusha | Super Model Of The World
68
Andrea Gáldi Vinkó | Heroes
76
Livia Geabelea | Spending time with the Roma
84
Kirill Golovchenko | Bitter Honeydew
92
Ivars Gravlejs | Riga
100
Michał Grochowiak | Silence
108
Branislav Kropilak | Geometric Visions
116
Gábor Arion Kudász | Time Capsule
124
Marge Monko | Studies of Bourgeoisie
132
Rafał Milach | 7 Rooms
140
Mindaugas Kavaliauskas | Portrait of Kražiai
148
Paula Muhr | Tata
156
Vesselina Nikolaeva | The Green Dress
164
Adam Panczuk | Roots of Culture
172
Bostjan Pucelj | Missing in Action
180
Peter Puklus | New Paintings
188
Vitus Saloshanka | Dreamland
196
Alnis Stakle | Ilgas
204
Lilla Szász | Mother Michael goes to heaven
212
Tehnica Schweiz: Gergely László & Péter Rákosi | Identikit
220
Zoltan Vancsó | Unintended Light
228
Tereza Vlčková | Mirrors Inside
236
Mirjana Vrbaski | Seven Verses of Emptiness
244
Piotr Zbierski | White Elephants
252
Barbora Žůrková & Radim Žůrek |
The brave new world of the Replacements
Rafał Milach | 7 Rooms, 2004 - 2010
1
Trapped?
How to use this book
In late spring of 2010 Horst Kloever and myself
put together the exhibition LABOR OST in Zurich/
Switzerland within the framework of the national
photo exhibition ‘ewz selection’. The public
carefully looked at the show, spent quite some
time discovering unknown creative talents that
geographically speaking – Zurich is in Western
Europe – stem from the ‘East’. Talking during
and after the show with some of the visitors, I
discovered what in culture anthropology would be
called a ‘positive stereotype’. There was quite a bit
of astonishment among the visitors that so much
was going on among young photographers from
the so called ‘East’. But I started having doubts
about the whole labelling of our show by using the
word ‘East’.
ones where the dense net of art schools, supporting
foundations, photo museums, commercial galleries
and curators all merge into a promotional engine
of high energy, making it almost impossible for a
young photographer not to be discovered.
This book is necessary not because the work
presented on its pages is ‘Eastern’, but because of
the ghosts of the past still so present. Had Europe
not been divided, would you care about ‘East’ or
‘West’ while browsing through this publication?
Certainly not. Such contradictions are the blood
of our times. In this sense, this book is about ‘The
East’. But only in this sense.
Walter Keller
Do you get better credits or comments because
you come from an ‘exotic’ country that people from
the West hardly ever travel to, while we seem to be
familiar with capitals of western nations or the USA
as if they were our own cities?
The very first – and only – paragraph of the manual
for this book should say: please ignore the fact
that the artists published in this volume were born
where they were born. Don’t fall into the trap of
interpreting the works presented as geographically
determined. Simply look at the presentation of
every single artist and make a judgement only and
exclusively based on the quality of the work. The
artists in this book are not ‘Eastern’ photographers.
Even if they are. They simply are young artists who
by chance were born in different countries than the
2
Grand Tour Grotesque
An essay on travelling the East of Europe
accompanied by some reflective photographs.
My first encounter with Eastern European
photography was downright absurd. In summer
2005 I travelled to Bucharest. This tattered city of
vaguely the size of Berlin with a growth rate similar to
Istanbul’s is located in the sometimes scorching hot
Romanian plain. I visited the (artphoto)image.festival
which was an overambitious and intellectualised
carbon copy of the formative Fotofest, a binannual
meeting place situated in Houston, Texas since
1986. Notwithstanding the attendance of the
Fotofest founders Wendy Waitriss and Fred Baldwin
themselves and some other acclaimed protagonists
of the international photo festival circus, the
Bucharest event withered after one performance
due to obvious public disinterest. A charity auction
of photographic prints was visited by precisely two
individuals who were not international guests or part
of the festival organisation. The (artphoto)image.
festival was soon replaced by the Bucharest Biennal
of Contemporary Art which seems to be doing better
and suits the great great grandchildren of ancient
Roman maverick Ovid much better after what I have
heard.
In 2005 far more attention was paid to a really
exciting art & fashion magazine launch on the roof
level of the Mnac contemporary art museum. This
steel and glass structure had been carved into the
back wall of the hubristic Ceaucescu Palace of the
Parliament. As main attraction models were locked
into a glass cube and posed for the photo snapping
public as if in a posh living room for more than half
an hour. The strange spectacle reminded me of
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 film La Notte, but in
colour: beautiful people out of their minds but locked
into psychotic prisons they built for themselves and
others.
So in Bucharest I found out not only about the
crazy sparkling stylishness of the Romanians but
got initial information about many other highly
recommendable and well visited photo festivals all
over eastern Europe. Some seem almost historic
and a little ossified today like the one in Bratislava,
Slovakia, others were founded not even ten years
ago like the lively Łódź Fotofestiwal and the fresh
Fotomonth in Kraków, both Poland.
‘The Romanian countryside is beautiful; it offers
people the possibility of experiencing the rich and
tumultuous history of Western and Eastern cultures
coming together in Europe’, Waitriss and Baldwin from
Houston reported graciously. So I and many other
photo aficionados accepted the festival’s invitations
to discover Central- and Eastern European cultural
landscapes and their visual languages, which are
far from uncharted in their homelands.
About twenty times I visited the beautiful but scarred
stretch from the Baltic to the Black Sea whose
peoples and cultures suffered from Soviet and
Nazi rule inconceivably in the ‘century of terror’,
the twentieth. History was always on my heels in
Bratislava, Prague, Łódź, Kraków, Warsaw, Kaunas
5
Bucharest 2005
6
and Budapest, to name a few of the places I visited
to attend their photo festivals, create exhibitions and
learn more about the arts and their protagonists
there. At the same time I was purpusefully trying
to complete my vague picture of European history
which was missing many precious shards.
One of the most enlightening moments of that
secondary quest was my visit to the Museum of
Photography in Kecskemét, Hungary, in 2008. Its
building has been an orthodox synagogue until
1944 and was unoccupied for a long time prior to its
sensitive reconstruction and reopening as museum
in 1991. The ceiling is covered with mystical
animal symbols and golden Hebrew inscriptions,
the round windows of the library on the gallery are
fitted with Stars of David. These resemble glowing
pupils casting light and shadow on the collection of
Hungarian and international photographs, books
and photographica. Here I started to think about
one element missing in many places from Lithuania
to the Balkans: The once vibrant Jewish life and
culture. Milan Kundera stated in 1984 in his essay
‘The tragedy of Central Europe’: ‘the Jews in the
twentieth century were the principal cosmopolitan,
integrating element in Central Europe: they were its
intellectual cement, a condensed version of its spirit,
creators of its spiritual unity. That’s why I love the
Jewish heritage and cling to it with as much passion
and nostalgia as though it were my own’. The near
extinction and exodus of the Jewish population
created one of the many voids noticeable all over
Europe. It may take more than one century of peace
and tolerance to fill it with life again.
One slideshow of the Fotomonth Kraków in May
2010 was projected in an elongated basement
room filled partly with the imposing remains of the
Kraków city walls. It featured a seemingly endless
series of documentary photographs by Wojciech
Wilczyk from Poland. He soberly depicted three
hundred and ten former Jewish prayer houses and
synagogues located all over his home country. His
three year project is an example of an artist trying
to secure traces of a lost world, so important in an
irritatingly ambivalent today.
Another visual artist who tries to cope with
the many layers of meaning of contemporary
appearances in central- and eastern Europe is
Magnum photographer Mark Power from the UK.
His project and book ‘The Sound of two Songs’
assembles pictures taken on 25 trips: ‘Poland is
a land bursting with visual contradictions. It’s like
listening to several melodies at once, to the point
where it is impossible to hear anything clearly’.
Just days before I visited the superb exhibition of
Mark Power who calls Poland ‘exotic’ in Kraków, I
myself had time to summarise and think about some
of the appearances I absorbed intensely in the last
five years. Most of them are everyday observations
which led me to a comprehensive but still highly
subjective conclusion.
Leaving the Łódź Fotofestiwal 2010 bound for
Kraków, I found it somehow hard to depart from the
room I was quartered in the Centrum Hotel. It is a
blocky functional building from the 1970s. My room
was spacious but without special characteristics like
the entire house except for the fact that David Lynch
7
puts up in the Centrum frequently when visiting an
important film festival here in November. The corridors
in the lower of the 13 stories are covered with original
dark wooden panels and grey structured wall paper,
stuffy as in Twin Peaks. From the 8th floor upward,
suites have been installed. The lady receptionist of
the Centrum told me that one of these was David
Lynch’s retreat. With a slightly conspiratorial smile,
she asks me if I want to have a look at the very
suite. A blonde trainee takes me upstairs. The young
woman in very high heels is almost taller than me
and only smiles bashfully when asked if she had
seen the master of surreal film making during one
of his stays. The corridors leading to the suites of
the Centrum hotel are sparsely illuminated by a few
flickering ceiling spotlights. I awaited the blonde to
suddenly disappear every moment into a yawning
doorway lit aquarium green, but she didn’t.
The very thick mousy grey carpet in David Lynch’s
suite forced me to drag my feet rather when entering
the rooms. My escort remained in the anteroom,
she would have had to take off her shoes to cope
with the carpet. The air was stale in the three
rooms and two bathrooms. There was a petty
bourgeois atmosphere in the temporary Polish
living room of David Lynch, whose films often are
shot in rooms meticulously arranged by himself. The
impression differed understandably enough from
the long remembered sombre imagery of his movies
Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Inland Empire. Only
the roundish, strangely body-like easy chairs might
have been borrowed from his surreal universe.
Somehow impressive were also the two identical
8
Photo Museum Kecskemét 2008
windowless bathrooms of the size of my double
room downstairs.
Some sequences from Lynch’s 2007 art movie
Inland Empire were shot in Łódź. Knowing this
can change one’s outlook on the city. Watching the
movies of David Lynch often had the effect of raising
my awareness of certain things. Not only sparsely
lit street corners at night time and glances into pitch
black entrance gates gain in attraction with David
Lynch’s imagery in mind. Behind every well-worn
wooden door, under every flickering corridor light
in Łódź I imagined something slightly obscure. Also
technical noises of lumbering elevators, whirring
streetcars and humming arc lamps may accompany
an attentive visitor and admirer of David Lynch’s
sound design through the city. It is in places such as
Łódź that one can indulge in the cult surrounding his
works of art and movies. The buildings of the extinct
textile industry and some totally decrepit backyards
offer surreal food for thought which is far tastier than
the stale debris from socialist times which is still
romanticised by many photographers, some of them
from the west.
There is a rumour that David Lynch always carries
a green folding chair with him when roaming the
‘Polish Manchester’ Łódź so as to get inspiration
in peace and quiet at certain places. Following his
footsteps a few yards worked as a catalyst on my
thinking. Visiting the depressing grounds of the
Litzmannstadt Ghetto and the enjoyable MS 2 Łódź
Museum of Art the same day sparked my thought
of a general tendency towards the grotesque in
many facets of contemporary life and art here and
in many other countries east of the former Iron
Curtain. Early recollections of eery Polish poster art,
first hand experiences with absurd and impromptu
theatre in Romania and Hungary, artist Zbigniew
Libera’s devious toy concentration camp made
of Lego bricks, the breathless writing of Ukrainian
Juri Andruchowytch and hundreds of unexpectedly
humorous and sometimes downright disturbing
photographs I saw in the last years tuned my mind
and inspired me greatly on my travels onwards down
the roads of the grotesque. These discoveries took a
huge burden off my thinking: the cliché of an overly
melancholic ‘Slavic’ artist’s soul. Maybe it exists in
Russia but I suppose not in the countries of Centraland Eastern Europe I travelled.
Another aspect of Lynch’s world became
eminent: Alienation. The first university seminar in
comparative studies I ever attended two decades
ago suddenly made sense to me: its subject was
the impact of a highly disturbing transitory social
situation on an individual during the Thirty Years
War some 400 years ago. This war of doctrinaire
factions turned not only Germany but also Europe
upside down and inspired the monumental
adventure novel ‘Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus
Teutsch (The Adventurous Simplicissimus)’. This
novel introduced the grotesque into the literature of
Baroque. Its famous copperplate title print shows a
creature composed of a persuasively smiling satyr’s
David Lynch’s chair, Łódź 2009
9
head, female body, male arm, duck- and cow feet,
bird wings and a fishtail. This figure is an allegory of
man torn from one folly to the next in a crazy world
full of opportunities and snares. The Simplicissimus
in the book travels central Europe, then to Moscow,
around the world, gets rich, loses all and finally finds
peace on a deserted island.
But back to the road here and now. In the Centrum
hotel room on the 7th floor which I was reluctant
to leave, only one small feature stood out: a small
round hole like from a small-calibre bullet in the
inner pane of the panoramic window. It was exactly
at the height of a grown up’s hand aiming at the
window with a pistol. Standing right in front of the
hole, I had the vision of someone shooting at the
Soviet style building standing opposite the hotel in
some distance. It was one of the phallic structures
the omnipotent doctrine left in every bigger city
of it’s realm. This building style and its inherent
significance might be one of the more dissonant
tunes in the Sound of two Songs photographer Mark
Power is talking about.
I finally made it to the oppressive Łódź Kaliska train
station, still yearning for the basic comfort of the hotel
room, and entered a six-seat train compartment at
noon. It was quite convenient for my intention to
make myself at home wherever I can while travelling
the east. Dark green seating, burgundy curtains
with the sign of the Polish state railways woven in
endlessly. I took an aisle seat which allowed me to
watch the outside world passing by through multiple
reflecting layers of glass. Moreover my old fashioned
compartment was equipped with a panoramic mirror
10
and a hat rack right above the seats. I am not
actually fond of pork sausages but the smell out of
the lunch box of the almost bald man sitting next
to me suited the place. Opposite him sat a young
woman with bleached chin-length hair constantly
whispering the word ‘słuchaj!’ into her mobile phone.
While she was asking someone remote to listen up,
she hectically flipped through a gossipy magazine.
The windows fogged slowly and it started to rain,
out there, two windows away. In the pine and birch
forests we rolled through dark wooden houses were
hiding. Before and after the small towns along the
line new and crumbling industrial structures stood
guard. I dozed off, cradled by the rhythm of the
heavy wheels hitting the gaps between the single
rails. I noticed the exhaustion of running throughout
Łódź for three days and I was bored, which oddly
felt good in here.
Suddenly the woman touched my arm and waked
me from my musings. She said ‘Wagon Krakau’
in German supposing I was also going there and
pointed over her shoulder. Now she had a dashing
feature at the corners of her mouth, smiling. She
stormed out of the compartment, whipping on her
backpack. I collected my stuff as fast as I could and
hurried after her. She stood at the double door to the
next carriage, ready to pull it open with both hands,
waiting for me. She had cowboy-style knock knees
and was not taller than five foot fifty. I caught up
and she tore open the door, railroad noise intruding
from below the shifting steel plates I stepped over
after her. This procedure was repeated four times,
she never slowed down, I tried to keep up with
her, dragging my suitcase full of photo books from
Łódź behind. Suddenly she turned left, smiled and
disappeared in a crowded compartment. I walked on
to the next glass box full of people, taking a deep
breath, thinking about where to sit the remaining
two and half hours to Kraków. In there sat another
young woman who would be an adornment to any
state ballet corps. Raven-black hair braided into a
thick tail reaching down to her waist, cerise lips, no
makeup covering her fine and vigorous features.
She is reading, holding the book close to her face,
following the lines with her eyes rapidly. I take a
picture of her, undiscovered through the layers of
glass between us. Among the reflections of the
early summer broadleaf forest I discover her again
on the enlarged screen of my digital camera. She
is wearing a silver pearl in form of a tear around
her neck, framed by the décolleté of her tight top.
Entering her compartment was like a leap in time a
hundred years back. She did not look up from her
reading. The place next to her was occupied by her
old fashioned leather baggage. She was reading a
book by Polish writer Reymont. I would have liked
to ask her what it was about but two musicians in
much to tight shirts and with big cases entered and
killed the mood. The train stopped for more than
half an hour at Częstochowa where our carriage
was uncoupled and changed direction. I would have
liked to doze again but the boys giggled constantly
over things on their brandnew silver Macbook
while brushing strands of hair from their faces. The
young woman did not look up until now. In that very
moment the door was pulled open energetically and
a bearded man in a big black coat entered. He wore
a wide-brimmed hat, side locks behind his ears,
heavy suitcase and a bandbox in tow. The man
nodded without smiling, took of his hat and placed it
in the rack above him. One of the musicians helped
him with the suitcase. Once in the seat opposite he
pulled out a Hebrew pamphlet and started reading.
His lips moved from time to time but no sound came
out. I did not have the chutzpah to photograph him
there, with his black hat hovering twenty inches
above his head, not even with my mobile phone.
Still I remember it as a great picture and it got even
better when he closed his eyes a little later and slept
for at least half an hour. The musicians had calmed
down and listened now to music from identical big
headphones, the beautifully outdated woman was
11
12
absorbed in her book again and I started imagining
all of us here in a stagecoach heading east through
an endless forest lined with foothills on the right. The
presumed rabbi is on his way back to his teaching
job in Czernowitz, the musicians are a piano duo
invited to play Chopin for a rich patriotic Polish count
at his hunting manor. I did not find my role in that
play. Salesman is wrong, scientist is way too much
credit, for an adventurer I am too much of a coward,
since I never leave the main tracks. And the young
lady should not travel alone, one of the musicians
had cast an eye on her already...
A thunderstorm built up behind the railway embankment. First flashes lightened the sky full of dark
clouds. In a swamp close to the tracks a red love
seat floated. The Orthodox stood in the aisle, looking
out. I joined him and we talked for the rest of our
journey to Kraków about prices of living in European
and Israeli cities and how crazy it would be to travel
by road or train from Kraków to Tel Aviv if such a
route existed.
Exactly the moment the train came to a screeching
halt at Kraków Glówny his mobile phone rang with
an Israeli pop song. ‘My daughter,’ he excused with
a shrug and a smile, ‘she changed the ring tone to
this and I don’t know how to change it back’. He
wandered off the wide square in front of the station
towards the underpass to the old city. Overhead
a huge electronic billboard shows a picture of five
young international women running out of the spray
of the sea advertising bikinis for a big Swedish
clothing company. I saw the identical picture days
before in Berlin, then in Zurich, Łódź and now here
again. That’s photography, too.
Horst Kloever
Łódź, Kraków, Berlin May & October 2010
13
“Essayism is a stage on the journey to a vision of another ‘state of
mind’, which is as utopian as it sounds.”
Robert Musil
Impression from the exhibition ‘NN personality’ by Przemek Dzienis, Łódź 2010
14
15
‘In Eastern Europe – that is to say, nowhere?’
Photography from Central and Eastern Europe is,
according to the ‘Labor Ost’ curators, ‘an uncharted
territory – particularly in comparison to the USA or
Western Europe and Scandinavia’. This perspective,
common among contemporary Westerners, reflects
a problem with a much wider historical and cultural
context. Throughout history the paths taken by
Western and Eastern Europe often diverged, most
recently under communism. For Europe west of
the Berlin Wall, Eastern Europe almost ceased to
exist, as if it had sunk into a historical abyss. At the
same time, for Eastern Europeans, their carefully
cherished European identity disappeared. They
needed to learn to live in a historical void - in other
words, not live but survive (paraphrasing Claudio
Magris’ words from his book, ‘Danube’).
What is happening in Eastern Europe today is surely
unprecedented. With the fall of the Berlin Wall,
communism symbolically came to an end. Clichéd
as it may sound, it was the starting point of Eastern
Europe’s gradual return to its rightful place in an
age-old European tradition, as well as the region’s
impressive political, social, and, most importantly,
cultural revival. Without a doubt, the situation for
photography from the former Eastern Bloc has also
improved radically. What had been developing in
the West has since fused with what was already
happening in Eastern European photography
(i). The ability we have today to rapidly diffuse
knowledge has already contributed to a steadily
growing appreciation of photography from this part of
Europe, resulting in the inclusion of more and more
names from the ex-Soviet Bloc region in books on
the history of photography (ii), serious anthologies,
16
major exhibitions, and auction rooms. Of course,
some classics of Eastern European photography
such as: Witkacy, the Themersons, Alexander
Rodchenko, André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy,
Jan Saudek, Josef Sudek, Frantisek Drtkol, Boris
Mikhailov, Josef Koudelka, Miro Švolik or Zofia
Kulik have not been omitted, largely as a result
of them having revolutionized the development of
photography and, consequently, having already
won much well-deserved appreciation (iii). Yet,
there are many artists whose contribution to world
photography is still largely unrecognized.
LAB EAST
Ex-Soviet Bloc photographers, participating in
the booming culture of photo festivals not only
within the region (iv), but all over the world, have
opportunities to travel, study and exhibit that
were previously unimaginable; there have also
been persistent attempts to establish a market
for photography collections (v). The expansion
of professional photographic production for both
the local and foreign media, as well as a flood
of various internet sites and e-magazines, have
substantially erased the gap in the exchange of
knowledge. Still, there is no doubt that Eastern
European photography remains a rich territory to
explore, an uncharted paradise for serious studies
(both historical and contemporary) (vi).
The Lab East book project – a photographic journey
into ‘The Heart of the New Europe’ – provides a
much-needed source of information on what is
happening on the Eastern European photographic
scene at the dawn of the 21st century. Having the
project at our disposal is an insight into sceneries
and faces that to a Westerner might at first seem
exotic, but soon become less so. The book is a
subjective account of an ‘expedition’ by Berlinbased writer, critic, and curator Horst Kloever. His
Eastern European roots do not make him an insider.
However, as his vision remains that of a curious
outsider with extensive knowledge of photographic
history, its associations and practice, his is the
viewpoint of a western explorer. His strength is to
take the risk to point out the names of artists and
personalities to pay attention to, many of whom are
not yet established.
Horst Kloever’s approach, on the one hand,
resembles that of a systematic hunter, a maniacal
type travelling into the East, penetrating a new
obscure territory; on the other hand, he remains
a neutral and scrupulous analyst collecting and
scrutinizing images created in the area of his
research. One can also look at Horst Kloever’s
work as a first attempt at creating his canon. Time
will undoubtedly show which of the Lab East artists
will achieve global recognition.
Horst Kloever does not intend to include all the
aspects of photography in contemporary Eastern
Europe. Rather, his selection takes the form of a
meticulous choice of practitioners whose work is
particularly representative of his vision of the region
today. He appreciates artists whose self-confidence
is sufficiently developed to ‘use empathy, intelligent
critique, and humour to describe their personal
environment’. He encourages the discussion on
aesthetics and socially relevant issues that the
reader may discover and compare. Of course, the
Lab East artists who have been selected share
geographical roots (vii). Likewise, they are of a
similar age but, more importantly, they share a high
level of photographic practice.
Scars from stitches
Lab East presents a wide diversity of photographic
visions ranging from the current tendency towards
documentary style as ‘an international style’ in
photography to the influence of a very contemporary
aesthetics (viii). This may be a reason to happily
incorporate them into a photographic ‘Euro pudding’
(ix). Naturally, one could easily ignore the artists’
origin and base one’s judgement exclusively on the
quality of their work, with which the audience may
just be unfamiliar.
Assuming that the Eastern European character
is the key to the projects included in the book; it
does not necessarily follow that this is presented
in a blatant way. It might be helpful to visualize this
part of Europe as a huge meandering European
river that, for a short while, lost its connection with
the main current and even today, reconnected, still
carries some features of a dead arm, still water
shrouded in a slightly hallucinatory aura. Then, a
common motif comes to light that begins with the
derelict and decaying rooms of the Ilgas Palace
from Alnis Stakle’s work, through dream-like
visions of Piotr Zbierski’s ‘White Elephants’ to Arnis
Balcus’s dead ceremonies. Time winds its way like
an unclear recollection imprisoned in the recesses
of our memory. Such are the stories told by many of
the Lab East projects and they are only seemingly
similar to western projects. Their narration reveals
an unexpected and noteworthy aspect of time – the
necrotic time of the old riverbed shining through the
mainstream rhythm of everyday life. This peculiarity
does not exclude realism. In Kirill Golovchenko’s
‘Bitter Honey Melon’ the scenes of Russian street
peddlers are caught with acute detail, but it may be
the aura of the night that puts realism in discrete
parenthesis here. Krisztina Erdei’s ostentatious
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daydreams ‘avoid normal perceptional experience’.
Their strength lies in an ability to peek behind the
banality and absurdity of the quotidian.
Interrupted continuity
The devastated interiors of the Ilgas Palace from
Stakle’s work illustrate in a compelling manner
the dilemma of an interrupted continuity and a lost
past, which returns like a phantom. The relationship
between the interiors and the students inhabiting
them is not about having roots. The interiors
themselves look like the threads of a beautiful
dream of which, once we have awoken, we are
unable to make a coherent whole.
The broken continuity theme returns in the grim
and distorted image of villa architecture in Vitus
Saloshanka’s ‘Dreamland’ project of Belarus. Here
architectural tradition is reflected in a distorted
mirror. Yet, neither the winter landscape, full of
blocks of flats, nor the rooms’ interiors in Rafał
Milach’s ‘7 Rooms’ reveal any trace of tradition and
function. It is a place somewhere beyond time. The
space is no longer shelter for the people inhabiting
it. A historical gap is omnipresent in both – the
interiors and the faces.
Paula Muhr attempts to recreate the broken
thread through generational bonds. Her father,
the main hero of ‘Tata’, is depicted in various
social roles – that of a sportsman, businessman,
and macho man. The gallery of roles and poses
is full of the warmth one might find in a family
album – which is itself the symbol of a generationto-generation tradition cherished within the home.
Tradition returns, seemingly uncontaminated, in
Adam Panczuk’s projects - on the theater group
Czeladonka of Lubenka and the Karczebs on
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the Polish - Belarusian border. Myth, eternal
time, and archetypal time are still very alive and
prolific in those who did not break with tradition.
The opposite of a tradition unhampered by time
is group amnesia in Arnis Balcus’s project. What
has been erased is the ‘new secular tradition’ of
Soviet morals and everyday life forced into the
subconscious of society. The artist depicts a double
erasure – a new tradition that for decades was
supposed to eradicate another tradition. Unlike
palimpsest, however, the broken threads with the
old tradition cannot be retrieved. Ivars Gravleys’s
‘Riga’ concentrates more on a staggering lack of
perspective in a ‘no-future country’ than the broken
connections with the past. But it is the past – a
prosperous one - that fractures in front of our eyes
due to the recent economic collapse. Continuity
shatters again at an unexpected moment. But some
Lab East projects are misleading regarding place
and time. The people portrayed by Mirjana Vrbaski
in ‘Seven Verses of Emptiness’ are deprived of any
context, resembling instead dissected butterflies
in a glass-case. The artist mainly refers to two,
both equally orthodox icon-painting traditions – of
Eastern Christianity and communist tradition.
Bodies without qualities in interiors without qualities
become Vanja Bucan’s tribute to Robert Musil,
raising the question that perhaps it is a peculiar type
of beauty that is an Eastern European ‘specialty’.
This intuitive reference to Musil’s writing directs
our attention to a particular place for our part of
the continent. It is Vienna, the symbol of a shared
yet unstable fate of both parts of Europe. Vienna is
the setting for one of the most captivating Lab East
projects. In Marge Monko’s ‘Studies of Bourgeoisie’,
the Eastern European arm returns to the mainstream
of European tradition, rediscovering the moment
and place where it fell asleep. The moment is the
beginning of the last century, the places – Vienna
bourgeoisie interiors, along with Sigmund Freud’s
apartment. Here, reason obsessed with dominating
the unconsciousness lying beyond its reach, woke
up monsters it could not control.
In Monko’s photographs the model’s back
becomes arched in the spasms of a fit inside the
trimmed bourgeoisie living spaces, where every
detail is organized by reason. It becomes a visible
sign of the disharmony that stigmatized the entire
epoch. The chaos, which emerged out of the thirst
for order, was pushed behind the iron curtain of
the subconscious. Eastern Europe became the
domain of the subconscious, a place of exile for
the phantom of the past created by reason (x). The
dead arm, the old riverbed, returns to the salons of
a European metropolis in the guise of an ecstatic
maenad who pictures what rational tradition is
unable to tame or erase.
The Lab East project serves as an engaging insight
into what is happening in photography among
Eastern neighbours who ‘are still a little unfamiliar’.
Many of the projects selected prove once again
that photography knows no geographical borders
and its trends are for the most part universal. But
the strength of Lab East is also an opportunity at
the beginning of a new century to look more deeply
into the condition of European consciousness and
subconsciousness through photography.
which is about to begin, it takes place in Poland -- that is to
say, nowhere.’ Quoted in Jarry, Alfred; transl. Beverly Keith and
Gershon Legman (2003). Ubu Roi. Dover Publications.
(i) For example the tradition of photo reportage in Poland,
Hungary, The Czech Republic along with Lithuania.
(ii) Older books on photographic history – e.g. by Newhall or
Pollack mostly ignored the names of Eastern European artists.
(iii) It should be added that many of those already enjoying high
esteem were émigrés or had had foreign publishers, agents or
galleries behind them.
(iv) It needs to be mentioned that the oldest festival in Eastern
Europe – Bratislava Month of Photography celebrates its 20th
anniversary in 2010!
(v) I still remember covering Paris Photo 2008 where still only
one gallery from the ex-Soviet-Bloc was exhibiting – that was the
Vintage Gallery from Budapest (which had already exhibited at
Paris Photo for many years). In 2010 with work by more than 90
Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovakian and Slovenian artists, Paris
Photo offers ‘an exceptional overview of the Central European
scene, from the 1920’s avant-garde movements and the post-war
years through to the most contemporary production.’
(vi) I am talking here about the still existing need of serious
studies on the history of photography of the region by local art
historians and critics as local contemporary artists, who in many
cases unfamiliar with their own roots, often make references to
the well covered foreign tradition rather than their own. In Poland
for example the pioneering work on the subjective history of
photography by Adam Mazur was only published in 2010…
(vii) Horst Kloever consciously decided to exclude artists from
Russia and Eastern Germany
(viii) It can be traced in the works by Vlčková, Grochowiak,
Bownik, Vrbaski or Žůrková and Žůrek among others.
(ix) The cinema-related term was used by Horst Kloever in
reference to photography in one of our numerous and inspiring
conversations.
(x) Of course repressive reason – the poisoned fruit of the
Enlightenment was already described by Horkheimer and Adorno
more than 50 years ago.
Katarzyna Majak
is an author, member of editorial board of Kwartalnik
Fotografia (Fotografia Quarterly) and visual artist
living in Warsaw, Poland
The title of this essay is a paraphrase of Alfred Jarry’s introduction
to the premier of ‘Ubu Roy’ in Paris in 1896. ‘As to the action
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Arnis Balcus | Collective Amnesia
The Soviet past is a problem. Or more exactly,
it is a problem of the elite: dissociating from the
communist ideology today it has to explain its lack
of political dissent in those days. When narrating
the collective identity, the elite storytellers use to
bracket the ordinary life of common people. Arnis
Balcus renews a temporal sense of identity by
legitimising the banal everyday experience. How
do his photos work? The indexical nature of the
photograph makes us believe this picture is an
imprint of reality. Some objects, however, seem to
be at odds with our present environment. But it may
be explained by framing. Stored in attics, antique
shops and flea markets the Soviet paraphernalia is
returned to its original place. In some photographs
Balcus does the opposite by introducing our
contemporaries into old scenery. As iconic signs the
photos merge past and present in non-contradictory
way: the props fulfil their habitual functions and
people act as usual. The photos are not only
footprints of reconstruction, but they also carry a
symbolic sense renewing temporal continuity of our
identities. As usual, wardens watch the traffic, old
ladies hoist a flag, girls are chatting in a bus, and
schoolchildren are compelled to drink milk…
‘Collective Amnesia’ is just a metaphor. Intentional
regulation of information flows of human experience
is not possible. Cerebral databases are not
hopelessly deleted. Only keys can get lost or signs
to access paths can disappear. Locked information
strives to break out, in a dream or a work of art,
since a person wishes to feel and understand
the continuity of his/her individual unique identity.
At worst, the suppressed information turns into
a psychosomatic symptom disturbing the self
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and others. This is why Arnis Balcus’ photos can
have a therapeutic effect. The photographer recontextualises the experience of the past showing
that the everyday life of common people can
become an object of interest for visitors of an art
gallery. When becoming such an object, it quite
naturally turns into a topic of public discussion. The
word, we know it for sure, cures. Including cases
of amnesia.
Sergei Kruk
Anis Balcus (born 1978 in Riga, Latvia) lives and
works in Riga and London, England. After having
studied Communications at the University of
Latvia in Riga he completed a Masters Degree
in Photographic Studies at the University of
Westminster in London.
arnisbalcus.co.uk
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Bownik | Gamers
Bownik’s project ‘Gamers’ consists of three parts.
A portrait series of young people competing in
internet games is complemented by photographs
showing the rooms where they exercise their sport.
The third part called ‘Ready-mades’ is a series of
reconstructed items originally manufactured by
gamers to fill the gap between their practical needs
and the gear provided by specialised high tech
companies.
The idea for ‘Gamers’ originates from Bownik’s
interest in e-sports, a new discipline and new
phenomenon of popular culture. His concept provides
a brilliant excuse for confronting the archetypical
image of an athlete with the new electronic one at
home in the world of internet sports. These new
sportsmen are highly dependent of technology. In
Bownik’s portraits they are presented in isolation,
without their attributes like joysticks, mice or medals
which would define them. The series of portraits
has been arranged by the artist as a typology.
This strategy forces the viewer to look carefully for
any signs which might provide an answer to the
question of their identity: what makes these young
men special, what characterises them?
The same strategy is used for the series of training
rooms. These are displayed as autonomous
images, giving the viewer a chance to ‘read’ in the
rooms and to focus on details and traces of usage
and ageing connecting them to their inhabitants.
Bownik has adopted a strictly documentary stare
on these rooms, similar to evidence photography.
Characteristic objects like diplomas and electronic
sports equipment can be discovered for forming
complex profiles of the persons living and playing
in these rooms.
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Ready-mades, the third part of the project, is the
best example for Bownik’s interest in the influence
of technology on daily life. By concentrating on small
and simple objects which have been manipulated
and then carefully reconstructed, the artist wants to
show how simple objects may become interesting
for culture and art. He redefines them through the
power of the photographic image and presents
them in a wider aesthetic field as artefacts. Furthermore this work is about the image itself: how
does it affect the viewer, how convincing are the
presented archetypes and how far do we believe
in the ability of the image to provide all necessary
information about its subject? These issues are
crucial for Bownik’s concept. He is very conscious
about the defining power of the image. Every single
one of his works is trying to examine this postulate
all over again. Jacub Śwircz (Yours Gallery Warsaw)
Pawel Bownik (born 1977) lives and works in
Warsaw, Poland. He studied Philosophy at the
University in Lublin and Photography at the Fine
Arts Academy in Poznan. Besides curatorial
activities mainly in Poland, he participated in the
artists collective Ikoon - The Multimedia Body.
Bownik’s photographic work has been shown in
Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Germany. For
his photographic series ‘Gamers’ he received a
scholarship from the polish Ministry of Culture and
National Heritage in 2008.
bownik.eu
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Vanja Bucan | Epilogue
This is a story about an urban condition humaine
which was taking place during the winter
and has finished with the beginning of spring.
If the city is a scatter plot, a place between
corporal and ephemeral,
between flesh and chemical matter,
between silence of the material and crying
of a man – we the city people are its flesh and
blood, its unadulterated products who dress our
sexes with plastic textures and often exchange
fake smiles.
We pass along each other like atoms
as if we all just lost our bicycle and house keys.
We notice each others’ colours,
we smell perfumes but we don’t ask questions
which are specific.
We laugh at men who talk to themselves and
make strange noises and we are scared of dead
meat the butchers have thrown out for the dogs.
The aging concrete blocks push us back into
ourselves, for a moment we remember our
mothers and how painful that was.
We cross locations many times without dotting
them or giving them a name, we only remember
functional spaces and beautiful faces.
And when we grow old, we hide inside, invisible.
We remain dots and spots on a scatter plot
of a universal field of reason and madness.
Love is there, deep in our hearts – but we cannot
show it because the streets are dark
and lonesome.
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We joggle along other companions of boredom
and exhaustion.
Our city is in our pockets, we are its messengers,
kings and queens of nothingness.
Just sometimes we trace our soul in the mirror.
From the sky above we are registered as moving
objects made from a human substance who like
to shout and dance around.
One day the city will sink underground.
We will remain its fossilized fundaments
who smile from down under.
Vanja Bucan
Vanja Bucan (born 1973 in Nova Gorica, Slovenia)
lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
After studying Sociology at the University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia, she enrolled in Photographic
Studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The
Hague, the Netherlands. In 2008 she won the first
price at the EMZIN Photography Competition and
was awarded the Slovenian Photo of the Year
Price.
vanjabucan.com
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Kristina Erdei | Singles
Kriszta Erdei mapped the elements and the
state of the environment and everyday life-world
by scrutinising the details. Scanning through
this diary-like inventory of our ‘Hungarocell’
world (Hungarocell is Hungarian for expanded
polystyrene – a widespread packaging material),
the old commercial echoes in my ears: ‘because
it’s plastic…’. The striking immediacy radiating from
this material world is provided by the presence of
the artist’s lifestyle, the personal concern. We
encounter the formal features and composition of
the private photograph, and its ‘flaws’ as compared
to the classical imaging tradition, while a conscious
creative concept is outlined in the background.
Gergely László
Krisztina Erdei is naughty; she is a ‘bad girl’ who
creates confusion by changing the meaning of
images. What the picture is about is not always
easy to notice at first sight. She could be a
documentarist who uses alternative techniques or
different exposure times and so captures a number
of meta-narratives otherwise invisible. Her photos
are funny, but beyond grotesque and not ironical,
either - maybe we could call them pataphysical
daydreaming avoiding normal perceptional
experience. However, these pictures are deeply
rooted in reality, and this is how she is able to draw
the viewer’s attention to interesting associations,
structural analogies, or pendant thoughts.
Krisztina Erdei’s work consists of very strong
single photographs: troubling and exciting, like
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the collections of a fashion guru. We could say
they present a new generation’s visuals and their
directives for reality, with a consoling vision that
the culture of today, though it is clearly heading
somewhere, remains full of unexpected relations,
contingencies. The reality copied through Krisztina
Erdei’s camera is actual, not potential, and it forms
a complex world employing both model realities
and own experience.
József Készman
Krisztina Erdei (born 1976) presently lives and
works in Budapest, Hungary. She graduated from
the School of Philosophy and the School of Political
Studies at the University of Szeged, and studied
Film Theory and Visual Education at Loránd Eötvös
University Budapest. She is a founding member
and curator of Lumen Photography Foundation and
Gallery (photolumen.hu) founded in 2002.
photo.sittcomm.sk/erdei.htm
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Peter Fabo | A Place, a Person and a Thing
In the project ‘A Place, a Person and a Thing’ Peter
Fabo plays the role of the archaeologist of his own
photographic archive. He is selecting pictures that
he has never presented up until a certain point of
time and which he lost out of sight. Thus he follows
the concept of his previous project ‘Diana’, in which
he used negatives laid aside to reconstruct an
image of his long-term girlfriend.
In the series ‘A Place, a Person and a Thing’ Peter
Fabo selects pictures that initially were taken
without any particular intention. He regularly uses
photography for memorising moments, to reflect
later on people, places and situations that had
their individual significance at the time they were
depicted.
When the time is ripe, the artist allocates these
pictures to distinct selections, thus emancipates
them from their individual ‘historical’ background
and puts them into a new nexus. He manages to
break the link between the picture and its model
or object, which is often intimate and private.
Particular pictures are used as nuclei for sprawling
strands of storytelling. Peter Fabo associates them
instinctively. Like the preceding selection, this
process is highly subjective. So he summarises his
artistic experience and findings of a certain period
of time in a cohesive form that works well without
the addition of explanatory words.
Hynek Alt & Aleksandra Vajd
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Peter Fabo (born 1983) lives and works in Prague,
Czech Republic. After finishing his studies of Stone
Sculpture at the Technical Collegiate of Spišská
Nová Ves, Slovakia, he studied photography at
VŠUP - Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design
in Prague where he is currently working as an
assistant. His projects ‘Diana’ and ‘A Place, a
Person and a Thing’ were published as limited
edition books, pdf versions can be found on
fabophoto.com.
fabophoto.com
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Bevis Fusha | Super Model Of The World
Bevis Fusha uses photography to illustrate
coverage of international events in politics and
culture. His style of photo reportage is marked by a
complex and genuine narrative nature.
With his series ‘Super Model Of The World’ he
introduces the viewer to the multi faceted world of
fashion. The contest is held every year in Albania’s
capital Tirana by the US model agency Ford Models
and the Albanian broadcast station Top Channel.
The young girls taking part get a once in a lifetime
opportunity to fulfil their dreams to take part in
the finals in the USA. While covering this beauty
contest Bevis Fusha used all his skills to convey
manifold and contrasting impressions. He shoots
the event from every possible angle.
At one time he takes close-ups of defining details
like the extremely high heels of some of the
models. Next he photographs the runway and
public from a wide bird’s-eye perspective. In these
photographs the different viewpoints are combined
with internal and external perspectives. Some
pictures convey the feeling of being part of the
private space of the models behind the stage. At
the same time the spectator gets an impression
of the entire scenery of the catwalk through an
elevated vantage point in other shots. This game
of variegating the perspective is complemented by
intelligent application of lighting and depth of field.
All details are precise and focused but some are
blurred by motion.
Bevis Fusha develops a series of antitheses using
this technique: movement – standstill, closeness
– distance, narrative – snapshot, inner – outer
perspective, richness of detail – blur. By this working
method he also illustrates antagonisms which are
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derived from the theme of the beauty contest:
individuality – the masses, competition – team spirit,
limelight – audience, stress – patience. This series
of photographs is about the positive and negative
facets of a fashion show: the expectant audience,
the exertion of the models and the endless waiting
behind the scenery, the entrance into the show
and hoped-for entrance into the fashion world, the
concepts of beauty and emotions connected to all
this.
Anna Nowak
Bevis Fusha (born 1976 in Albania) comes from
a family of photographers. He studied Philosophy
and Sociology at the University of Tirana, Albania,
where he lives and works. Bevis Fusha is fully
aware of the power of the picture, which he not
only uses in his own work as a photographer
but also tries to communicate to others in his
teaching of photography. Fusha is a member of
the agency Anzenberger in Vienna, Austria and of
Metrocollective in Washington, USA.
bevisfusha.com
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Andrea Gáldi Vinkó | Heroes
To be good, to do good, to become heroes and to
be able to do anything: this is what children dream
about. The world is dangerous and menacing.
Experience is never coherent with the related,
imagined, projected or lived through. Heroes, who,
as super humans, possess special, non-human
but miraculous abilities are destined to make this
difference disappear, to eliminate contradictions,
to get rid of anomalies, to examine injustices and
demand reparation for them as well as protect the
defenceless.
All this carries a simple truth that is easy to see. But
what is truth, what is kindness, who is innocent and
defenceless and when? Who does really need help
and at what price can help, the restoration of order,
compensation be accepted? Andrea Gáldi Vinkó
photographs children dressed up in costumes who
see themselves in the role of heroes. They play
heroes to make justice and demand reparation.
In her photos, however, the imagined role, the
greatness of their assumed ‘mission’ is in sharp
contrast with the drabness and emptiness of
the background as well as the roughness of the
costumes. The dreamers dreaming dreams remain
prisoners of their own world not only in the physical
sense but also in their imagination. In the sticky,
filthy, mud-heavy world, clip-winged and wounded
from the outset, deprived of their wonderful abilities,
their magic power, hopeless. They are bound not
only by the physically existing and experienced
world but also by the fiction, which, as a parallel
of this world, is to make their existence if not
acceptable but at least bearable.
They dream about a world that is theirs. In this
world everything is clear and simple. According to
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their logic, stories have only one possible ending,
and conflicts only one possible resolution. They
imagine themselves into that world, the centre of
that world where everything begins and ends with
them in an ever-repeated circulation. They can
find their way around perfectly. That is exactly why
bad is possible along with good, but the hierarchy
between them is obvious and fixed. Good before
all, even at the cost of bad. However, that paradox
does not and cannot have a resolution. The victory
of good at the price of bad can only be accepted
by children’s imagination. The imagined pride felt
over the victory and the confidence, self-assurance
and strength that stem from it are only part of the
disguise. The sorrow in their faces, however, hints
at the necessary coming of revelation, bareness
and exposure. The apocalyptic moment when they
realise that it is only possible to imagine the world
from the aspect of the necessary ending when they
have to stand alone in reality.
Gábor Pfisztner
Andrea Gáldi Vinkó (born 1982) lives and works
in Budapest and Paris. She studies Photography
at the Moholy-Nagy-University of Arts and Design
and studied Art History and Aesthetics at Eötvös-Loránd-University and in Paris. She holds the
József Pécsi Photography Award. Her work was
exhibited in prestigious institutions and in various
galleries in Budapest and abroad.
andigv.com
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Livia Geabelea | Spending time with the Roma
Livia Geabelea’s simple and highly effective
black-and-white portrait of a young Roma woman
demonstrates the way how photography shapes
our image of poverty and generates affection and
compassion for people depicted in distress – since
1935 at least.
In total 171,000 black-and-white film negatives
and 1,600 colour photographs exist of the US
governments Farm Security Administration’s
(FSA) endeavour to document and propagate the
distress of North American farmers in these days.
Photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange
or Jack Delano (born 1914 as Jacob Ovcharov in
Ukraine) developed a highly effective and frank
style of depicting the farmers and families scattered
on the land, their squalid shacks and hopeless
living conditions which still affects us today. The
visual artists who became involved in this epochal
social documentary project subdued their will to
create pictures (especially Walker Evans, who
experimented with abstract city views before) and
simply followed their findings on the edges of an
overall prosperous society. Especially striking is
the comparison between the well-known blackand-white pictures and the colour works of Jack
Delano, for example, which are less well known.
The colour works suddenly take over the role
of a sober representation of an assumed reality
meanwhile the black-and-white ‘classics’ seem
somehow effect-seeking.
One can only wish Livia Geabelea’s personal small
scale documentary project success to achieve a
small portion of the massive impact the historic
FSA campaign had for the improvement of living
condition of its ‘clientele’. Granted, the basic
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conditions of the life of Roma and Sinti and also
the societies they live in are greatly different. Also
the goal seems to be set far higher taking into
consideration the regionally massive rejection of
these genuinely European people, also to be found
in countries that use the word ‘egalité’ (equality) in
their national motto.
Horst Kloever
Livia Geabelea (born 1976) presently lives and
works in Bucharest, Romania. She studied English
and French at the University of Bucharest before
attending photojournalism classes at the Centre
for Independent Journalism in Bucharest. She then
became a contract photographer for Masca Theatre
in Bucharest and is also one of the co-founders of
Romanian photo magazine PUNCTUM.
livingfor.com
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Kirill Golovchenko | Bitter Honeydew
What else could be done than referring to painting
in view of Kirill Golovchenko’s Ukrainian night
scenarios? Well, there are not too many market
scenes in the history of painting which play at
night. Most artists prefer the broad daylight for
capturing the abundant fruits of the earth and
their debonair pedlars on canvas. But at least one
example for a more sombre scenery exists: It was
painted in the 1630s by Parisian woman artist and
genius of the still life genre Louise Moillon. Here
something sinister comes into play: A pickpocket is
stealing from a customer while she is examining
the outspread merchandise. Some authors even
assume the complicity of the merchant. So the night
is background and symbol for a certain atmosphere
of danger and man’s darker veins, in general for
the struggle for survival and the misdemeanor it
could bring people to.
In the dramatically lit scenarios ‘Sodom and
Gomorrah’ and ‘The destruction of Troy’ (both
around 1595) by Dutch master of allegory Jan
Brueghel the Elder, the people have other things on
their minds than haggling or pilfering. In the first they
enjoy themselves in grouplets in the great shady
outdoors, disaster looming behind. In the second
the masses take to their heels to get away from the
threateningly blazing city in the background.
The patchy lighting and some allegoric similitude
connect these masterpieces to Kirill Golovchenko’s
photographs of the 21st century roadsides of his
native country Ukraine. He depicts a wide range of
people living on the ‘tochka’, offering fruit according
to season and also far more. ‘Tochka’ is a general
term for sales point, sometimes also referring
to prostitution. The merchants live close to their
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makeshift emporiums in tents and trailers, some
build shacks for the summer months. Many come
from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and mix with
the locals along the strung-out markets. They dwell
and sell alone or bring their families, kids growing
up on the street. A microcosm has formed of very
different people having one thing in common:
they want to make money to simply get along or
save up and improve their living conditions in their
respective homelands where most return for the
winter months, not making any money there at all.
But Kirill Golovchenko’s pictures are also about
compassion for these uprooted men and women. In
his own almost bitterly poetic words: ‘Do you think,
life is sweet when every car rushing by makes you
cough and your teeth grind? When dust and dirt
are an ingredient of your food, colour it and get into
your blood, thicken it to honey? This wears you out,
always you lose against that delirious fatigue...
You try to dilute your blood with energy drinks by
day, at night it’s vodka. But the holidaymakers
won’t leave you alone. They fly in their cars towards
your light bulb in the pitch dark, sucking out the life
that is left in you like hungry gnats. The customers
always know better about the prices of your melons
and where they come from prices are always lower!
But they want to buy from you.
Past midnight you want to doze and also keep an
eye on your melons, thieves are plenty. Gnats bite
you a dozen times, but you got used to that long
ago, which is not true... Soon morning comes,
calling to work again. Can you now imagine to ask
the vendor in front of you if the melon really tastes
like honey?’
Horst Kloever & Kirill Golovchenko
Kirill Golovchenko (born 1974 in Odessa, Ukraine)
lives and works in Mainz, Germany. Golovchenko
studied Communication Design and Photography
at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences.
Although he now lives in Germany, his work is
still connected to the lives and people in Ukraine,
which he, thanks to several scholarships, depicts
in his belauded documentary photographs. Since
2008 he has been a member of the photographers
agency Focus based in Hamburg.
kirillgolovchenko.com
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Ivars Gravlejs | Riga
At first the photographs of Ivars Gravlejs appear to
be completely different from each other. However a
closer look reveals at least one recurring feature: all
these works are ambivalent balancing acts between
documents of reality and playful exaggerations of
their respective subjects.
In his project ‘Riga’ this feature becomes expressly
manifest: the partly disastrous economic situation of
Latvia and the poverty of some of its inhabitants is
captured with an apparent indifference by Gravlejs,
but he always contradicts it with an absurd twist, as
in the picture with three grumpy ladies standing like
insulted penguins behind dirty snow mounds and
looking daggers at the photographer – the power
of this picture is the fine balance between humour
and realism.
The humour of the early works of great Czech film
director Milos Forman from the early 60s lights
up in Gravlejs still pictures. Both have studied
at the world famous FAMU in Prague, though in
completely different eras. At FAMU directors and
photographers have been educated simultaneously
since 1946.
Even in pictures, which merely show apparently
trivial objects, the field between the comic and the
social documentary is filled with tension. Be it a
ludicrous gutter pipe across a pavement to reach the
kerbstone and thereby becoming a serious tripping
hazard or the picture of a ballroom with a dominating
horizontal line defined by the half-finished paint job
on the lower part of a group of columns flocking
together on the dance floor – Ivars Gravlejs takes
up the role of an ironic annotator of his proximate
and largely disillusioning environment.
David Gaertner
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Ivars Gravlejs (born 1979) lives and works in Riga,
Latvia. He studied Philosophy at the University of
Latvia in Riga and Photography at FAMU (Film and
TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts) in
Prague, Czech Republic. Besides many artists’
residencies in France, his work has been shown in
Czech Republic, Russia, Germany and the United
Kingdom.
ivarsgravlejs.com
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Michał Grochowiak | Silence
The human face as a big, frontal surface in front
of a neutral background – this is its common
representation, the one we are used to because
it predominates portrait photography since the
1980s. Even if the central concepts of portrait,
like specific codes of representation, individuality
and resemblance, have changed since then, the
‘monumentalisation’ of the face as an isolated
objected still is the prevailing form. All the more
surprising are the back view figures of the
photographic series ‘Silence’ by Michał Grochowiak
– and the deeper they enter into our memory.
Michał Grochowiak developed a concept different
to the traditional definition of the portrait. He does
not show the physiognomy of his models but rather
depicts them in a three-quarter back view. Despite
the reduced view of the face the artist succeeds
in creating an autonomous character. The features
of his photographs and of his sitters are defined
by clothing and posture combined with a carefully
chosen background. The harmonious interaction
of model and patterned wallpaper makes each
photograph of the series unique and shapes the
identity of each depicted person and the individual
combinations distinguish the personalities of the
portrayed persons.
In his work Michał Grochowiak tries to redefine
expectations that are deeply rooted in our collective
consciousness. These pictures stand out because
they mix concepts from filmmaking and classic
painting. The back view is widely used throughout
the history of painting with a tradition reaching
back to antiquity. For example in Giotto’s early
renaissance oeuvre the back view was used to
depict interaction between different figures in his
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paintings. In 19th century romantic painting the
centrally positioned protagonist turned towards a
wide scenery became a role model, especially in
the works of German Casper David Friedrich.
In his conceptual series ‘Silence’ Michał Grochowiak
transports this motivic type into the here and now.
He translates it into his own visual language. Here
it is not the function, but the impact of the model
that is important to the artist. This holistic approach
is designed to facilitate the reflection of the portrait
genre.
Anna Nowak
Michał Grochowiak (born 1977 in Warsaw, Poland)
lives and works in Poland. Grochowiak first studied
Cinematography at the University of Silesia,
Poland, before taking up Photography at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan. His photographic
work has already been exhibited in Poland,
Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In 2009 he
attended an artist residency at Schloss Solitude in
Stuttgart, Germany.
michalgrochowiak.com
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Branislav Kropilak | Geometric Visions
Utopia is a place where positive visions become
reality. If Branislav Kropilak’s photographs have an
inclination to the Utopian, as he himself says, then
he is not in fact interested in the near or distant
future: he convincingly documents the aesthetics
of the here and now.
Branislav Kropilak’s works show how modern
technology shapes the environment and human
life. The precisely executed, large-format works
reveal a positive disposition toward technology as
well as a joy in geometry, in the radiance of complex
apparatus, and in the aura of functional space.
The photographer is able to capture a connection
to geometry’s design principles through his
unusual and highly analytical view of house-high,
multi-pieced billboards. He is not interested in the
messages they hope to convey but rather only in
the medium’s construction, which he reduces in
his clever compositions, viewed from below, to the
basic forms of triangle, circle, and square.
Other defining traits of Kropilak’s images are the
central perspective and the exact representation of
nighttime lighting effects, which he never portrays
with sentimental intentions. It is absolute clarity for
which these pictures strive. This clarity situates
the images in the aesthetic tradition of European
and North American landscape and architecture
photography – which has aimed since the 1970s
to provide grand overviews of the organisation of
human life and, above all, to represent and interpret
its technical aspects.
Horst Kloever
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Branislav Kropilak (born 1982 in Bratislava,
Slovakia) lives and works in Bratislava. Kropilak
spent most of his childhood in Belgium, travelling
a lot with his parents. He graduated at the Private
Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, then worked
for some years for creative agencies in Prague. In
2009, Branislav Kropilak won the 2nd prize at the
Sony World Photography Awards in Cannes.
kropilak.com
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Gábor Arion Kudász | Time Capsule
The home and the tree are both key symbols of the
inner and outer world, of the personal space and
nature. This work started out from a very simple idea
of repetitious documentation of identical objects of
both groups, but slowly became an investigation of
identity, originality and authenticity.
There are two pine tree shaped relay stations near
Budapest of identical design. I photographed them
from different viewpoints, during different seasons
and at different hours. In this series some of these
fake trees are more than identical, they are in fact
the same object.
Kitchens in socialist housing
estates were prefabricated including the furniture.
They even shared the view outside the window to a
great extend. Thanks to the economy of scarcity the
kitchen utensils were also similar for a long time. I
took pictures of several of these kitchens from the
same vantage point revisiting some of the locations
after one or two years. A comparison of the images
shows how the original design was customised by
their respective owners and how change over time
becomes visible within a person’s life. I search for objects that are monsters by their nature.
The tree camouflage steel towers are supposed to
blend into the environment. But mammoth pines
do not exist in Hungary. While a metal antenna
sticking up into the sky would go unnoticed, these
pines became conspicuous landmarks completely
getting out of line. In a similar manner ‘Plattenbau’
– so typical for the Eastern bloc – is an attempt
to erase the identity of its inhabitants. These living
spaces were designed to match the needs of the
average person and in socialist times ‘average’
was often mistaken for the ‘minimum’. As if people
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do not need to form their environment according
their own needs, these environments try to form
them to fulfil their once doctrinaire standards.
Prefabrication and mass production are one-way
communication channels of values like television
or bottle messages. As standardised elements are
gradually deconstructed by individual interventions,
the flow of communication is reversed providing
valuable feedback into the system.
The Time Capsules project is in progress.
Gábor Arion Kudász
Gábor Arion Kudász (born 1978) lives and works
in Budapest, Hungary. His work is balancing
between documentary and staged photography in
long-term projects exploring urban development,
environmental issues and industrial landscape.
He received the József Pécsi scholarship in 2004
and 2007. Since 2007 he studies with a state
scholarship for a DLA degree at Moholy-NagyUniversity of Art and Design. In 2010 Arion took
part in the European Eyes on Japan | Japan Today
project. He received the Márciusi Ifjak Prize of the
Hungarian Republic. His works were exhibited in
group shows at spaces like Musée de L’Elysée,
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Aperture Gallery and
at photo festivals from Lodz to Pingyao.
arionkudasz.com
Kitchen (Tamás), Budapest | Konyha (Tamás), Budapest 2007
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Pine Tree, Budapest | Fenyö, Budapest 2007
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Kitchen (Tape recorder), Budapest | Konyha (Magnó), Budapest 2010
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Pine Tree, Budapest | Fenyö, Budapest 2007
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Kitchen (Cat), Budapest | Konyha (Macska), Budapest 2007
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Pine Tree, Telki | Fenyö, Telki 2007
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Kitchen (Coins), Budapest | Konyha (Érmék), Budapest 2010
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Marge Monko | Studies of Bourgeoisie
Estonian Marge Monko calls herself an artist whose
working method is research based. Looking at her
complex ‘Studies of Bourgeoisie’ this remark does
not surprise. Marge’s impressive staged visual
commentary on hysteria is the artist’s contribution
to the collection of its almost forgotten and centuries
old imagery.
In autumn 2004 Marge visited Vienna as an
exchange student. She realized an environment
full of lush décors which was so different from
the functional block of flats she grew up in. More
or less at the same time she found her way into
the Sigmund Freud Museum. While looking at
the original volumes of case histories of hysterics
displayed there, she remembered the times when
she was captivated by reading Estonian summaries
of these. As a result of this insight Marge ended up
working on an in-depth artistic study of neurosis and
its treatment. It rests upon serious studies of Freud’s
writing and a substantial knowledge of Jean Martin
Chariot’s methods used in the Salpêtrière of Paris.
Also Albert Lode’s nineteenth century photographs
of hysteria cases came to her knowledge. These
were taken not only for Lode’s personal use but also
reproduced and published in the Iconographique
photographique de la Salpêtrière, which today can
be found online.
In an interview with Margot Kask, Marge Monko
admits that ‘the case histories written down by
Freud contained almost no medical terminology,
but were written almost like literature. Suddenly two
things collided – architecture and the case histories
of Freud’s hysterics’. The subject of her ‘visual
literature’ is the contemporary reinterpretation of the
challenging of bourgeois normative system with the
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help of historical sources – a strategy from which
also the surrealists drew major inspiration. The
artist photographed in original Vienna apartments,
the Sigmund Freud Museum, the Salpêtrière in
Paris and the Laulasmaa Resort on the Estonian
coast. All through her extensive research she tried
to figure out what hysteria exactly meant to her and
how to place it within a wider cultural context. In
general it is believed to mimic almost every disease
mankind suffers from.
Marge’s insight into the nature of various phases
of the hysteric disorder as well as its treatment
methods mesmerises. Her visual narrative
stretches from a romanticised representation of
hysteria as photographed in some bourgeois
Vienna interiors where every detail was carefully
considered (‘Tableaux II, III’ as well as in ‘Tête-àtête’), over its haunting associations in ‘Douche
Chariot I, II’ to the more contemporary stagings of
‘Hypnosis I and II’. The hypnosis-inspired diptych is
Marge’s own contribution to a broader discussion
of canonical representations of woman’s behaviour
impaired by society. The pictures show a repetition
enacted under hypnosis and stand as a metaphor
for compulsive behaviour.
Euphoria, hallucinations, ecstasy, bouts of spasm, la
grande hystérie… Marge’s work offers a fascinating
insight into some of the most mysterious aspects
of human nature. She discusses how we may
become (or already are) part of a bigger disordered
spectacle. Various aspects of abnormality stemming
from being controlled, watched, hypnotised,
spasmodic, post-traumatic, deformed, suppressed
are still out there waiting for being discovered and
processed.
Tête à tête
Text by Katarzyna Majak, author and member of
the editorial board of Kwartalnik Fotografia, Poland
Marge Monko (born 1976 in Tallinn, Estonia) lives
and works in Tallinn. She studied Photography at
the Estonian Academy of Arts and at the University
of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. In 2007 the
Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki
showed her ‘Studies of Bourgeoisie’, among other
venues. Her works can be found in the collection of
the Kumu Art Museum, Estonia.
margemonko.com
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Tableaux II
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Tableaux III
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The work
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Hypnosis I - II
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Douche Charcot I, II
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Hospital of Salpêtrière II
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Rafał Milach | 7 Rooms
At what point can an artist claim to have drawn a
photographic portrait of a whole generation? Rafał
Milach does not insist on that, yet in his project
‘7 Rooms’ he presents a very encompassing
description of seven people who live in three
different cities and do have one thing in common:
all of them were born in the USSR and raised in
Putin’s Russia. Rafał Milach accompanied those
people in their everyday life for five years and forged
a close relation to them. He made their places and
spaces in Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Krasnoyarsk
his own, these were the cities in which he also
lived and in which he made his observations and
gathered experience during his long term project.
Rafał Milach accomplished a sensitive social study
concerning a small choice of people and their
hopes, dreams and doubts, which stand for those
of many others. The portraits of the resulting series
of photographs are complemented by pictures of
drab urban landscapes. These represent an ailing
system and its social injustices.
Rafał Milach’s photography has humanistic roots
and a tendency towards social documentarism.
In ‘7 Rooms’ he builds a complex web of traces
of Russian history with the depiction of present
society woven in. He uses different forms of
pictorial expression to reveal social structures and
relations. Although he established a relationship
with the people by living with them and becoming
a sort of accomplice he keeps a certain distance
in his photographs: Milach observes his models
meticulously but never intervenes in their actions.
He remains discreet and stays on his observation
post at all times. His protagonists are mere
counterparts, posing in front of the camera.
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Sometimes they are shown isolated in an aura of
melancholy. Rafał Milach immerses in different
worlds, he never judges, rather tries to capture
an atmosphere evaporating from the daily life of
ordinary people in today’s Russia.
Anna Nowak
Rafał Milach (born in 1978 in Gliwice, Poland) lives
and works in Warsaw, Poland. Milach attended
the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, where he
received a Master of Fine Art degree in 2002. He
also earned a Bachelor Degree of Photography
from the Institute for Creative Photography (ITF)
in Opava, Czech Republic in 2003. In 2004 he
was invited to take part in a training program
for emerging photojournalists from Eastern and
Central Europe organised by the prestigious
Agence VU in France. A few years years ago Rafał
Milach founded Sputnik Photos together with 10
photographers to document and broadcast issues
of social transition in the CEE countries.
rafalmilach.com
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Mindaugas Kavaliauskas | Portrait of Kražiai
This photographic work is a depiction of a community
that in some ways might serve as a small model of
the Lithuanian province. During his studies at the
French National School of Photography (Arles) and
National School of Fine Arts (Paris), Mindaugas
Kavaliauskas was inspired by the documentary
work of Walker Evans and, particularly, a book
by Paul Strand and Cesare Zavattini ‘Un Paese’,
which depicts the transitory life of a small village of
Luzzara. Having spent about four years in France,
USA and Switzerland, Mindaugas Kavaliauskas
was invited to visit Kražiai, where a friend of him,
a priest, was serving as the parish dean. Eager to
work back in Lithuania, the photographer found
a situation that reminded him of the Luzzara of
Paul Strand, depicted 50 years earlier - changing
economic conditions, ageing community. But
in Kražiai this was topped by the beginning of
preparations to the 750th anniversary of founding
of Kražiai, which generated a lot of change.
Reconstruction of the only remaining church was
among the transitory moods.
Behind the image of the glorious past, Mindaugas
Kavaliauskas found the colourful community of
Kražiai. Milk, as the blood of local economy enrols
most of population in its working cycle. Teenagers
earn for their mobile accounts by working the hay,
while families struggle their way to Europe by
selling tons of milk for unbelievably low price, as
they consider it. Religious festivities of Saint Roche,
attracting Kražiai people from all over the world,
revealed the strong identity and pride. Historical
paradoxes are affluent in Kražiai. For example, a
house that formerly hosted the NKVD, where the
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members of resistance against Soviet occupation
were tortured and even killed in the post-war
years, in the beginning of the 21st century served
as a restaurant and hosts funeral dinners. These
paradoxes generate various points of view on civic,
human and historical matters. Young guys and
families leaving to work abroad and almost daily
funerals emphasise the few of the young families
starting their life in the middle of social nowhere.
Numerous social groups – choirs, youth clubs,
senior clubs, Christmas checkers competitions,
dancing and other events proved the locals to be
culturally implicated.
The Lithuanian School of Photography, which
emerged in the 1960s bears particular respect to the
photography of country communities. Contrary to
its typical exaggerated point of view and that of the
last wave of 20th century photography of European
countryside, Mindaugas Kavaliauskas decided
to avoid some extremities: the romantic imagery
of religious life and the brutal representation of
an eternally drunk and hopeless province life.
Consequently, this became a sober photographic
vision, constructed on the basis of Robert Frank or
Garry Winogrand’s perspective of typical situations.
Aided by his wife, sociologist Kristina Juraite,
Mindaugas Kavaliauskas not only took pictures,
but also recorded stories and points of views of
Kražiai people on kilometres of audiotape. The
photographer’s intention to create several portraits
turned into a long-term project that started in the
autumn of 2001 and continues up until now. ‘A
Portrait of Kražiai’ was on display at museums,
galleries and libraries in Lithuania and abroad. For
the promotion of the name of Kražiai, Mindaugas
Kavaliauskas was awarded the title of the honorary
citizen of Kražiai during the festivities of the 750th
anniversary of the founding of the village.
Graham Miller
Mindaugas Kavaliauskas (born 1974) lives and
works in Kaunas, Lithuania. He is a photographer,
art critic, publisher, curator, lecturer at the
University of Kaunas and the director of the annual
art photography festival Kaunas Photo.
mikas.lt
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Paula Muhr | Tata
Through the work ‘Tata’ I investigate various modes
of representation and role models that we internalise
in such an extent that they inform our subjectivity.
I turn my father (Serbian: tata) into a kind of
amateur fashion model asking him to pose for me
in his favourite clothes. He dresses himself up and
strikes poses in front of my camera in an attempt to
present all important aspects of his predominantly
macho identity: successful businessman, tennis
champion, gentleman, adventurous skier.
I stage his game of posing in different locations
in and around our family house. The images
refer to fashion photographs and family album
snapshots. The important difference lies in the fact
that my father strikes poses that are an amalgam
of his normal postures and his interpretation of
the attitudes expected from professional fashion
models. Therefore the resulting images, although
staged, retain certain qualities of family snapshots.
My father’s identity is at the same time revealed
and concealed as he acts out his dominant roles.
By imitating images from mass media with which
he strongly identifies, my father tries to create an
illusion of ideal life in which he strongly believes – a
still rather fit and agile elderly gentleman who can
effortlessly adapt to just about any male role. By
overacting his roles he unconsciously deconstructs
his own ideals.
Paula Muhr
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Paula Muhr (born 1977 in Subotica, Serbia) lives
in Berlin, Germany. In 2002 she received a B.A.
in Photography from the Academy of Arts BK,
Belgrade, Serbia. From 1999-2004 she studied
Literature & Theory of Literature at the Philological
Faculty, Belgrade, and received her M.A. in
Photography from the Faculty of Applied Arts,
Belgrade, in 2006. From 2006-2009 she attended
Master Class Studies at the Academy of Visual Arts
(Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) in Leipzig.
In 2007 she won the sittcomm.award (award.
sittcomm.sk) for her series ‘Tata’.
paulamuhr.de
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Vesselina Nikolaeva | The Green Dress
I bought the Green Dress but never wore it but I
took it in my suitcase everywhere I went. I needed
an occasion and a reason to put it on, but it never
came and I accepted its silent company.
The Green Dress project started with an oil
painting, a piano and three of us in an apartment
in the centre of Sofia a long time ago. I posed for a
portrait, wearing my Green Dress for the very first
time and listened to the grand piano placed in the
centre of the living room.
During our lifetime we meet people who shape us.
They become our friends, lovers, enemies and
sometimes stay strangers who have touched us in
some way, but will remember them until the end of
our days.
I absolutely know that I want to remember this day
forever. I went with the Green Dress, it being the
embodiment of feelings past and feelings yet to
come – a sentiment that will stay on, despite the
traces time leaves.
I believe the Green Dress came to me as a
message, like words unsaid and incomprehensible,
a note beyond time and space – I would write it
down as I went through the days… as they came.
I take the Green Dress portraits of others, but every
time it is a self-portrait with a story of its own. I am
not afraid that I might forget… because I remember
the feelings connected to the Green Dress.
Vesselina Nikolaeva
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Vesselina Nikolaeva (born 1976) lives and works
in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Utrecht, the Netherlands,
where she graduated in 2001 at the Utrecht
Academy of the Arts in Documentary Photography.
She is also winner of a Beginners’ Grand Award
of the Netherlands in 2002 and 2004. In 2005
she won the Best Young Photographer Award at
Photoespagna, Madrid. Her photographic work is
documenting the transitional state of New Europe
and has been published several times.
vesselinanikolaeva.com
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Adam Panczuk | Roots of Culture
In this Polish theatre you have to bring your own
chair. Its stage is built of wooden planks by the
actors, directors and playwrights themselves. The
arena is the stretched-out village of Lubenka in
East Poland and its roof is the sky. Sometimes the
ensemble leaves the makeshift stage. The actors
move around to other locations in the village,
performing in front of a house, a barn, a pond or at
the edge of the surrounding fields with the audience
and their manifold chairs in tow. After the show all
villagers banquet gaily together late into the night.
The group calls itself ‘Czeladonka’, their plays
are connected with the seasons, they highlight
ancient peasant rituals and tales handed down
from generation to generation. These plays are
populated with mystic figures, animals and three
generations of village people in different roles, who
mostly enact themselves with a fair shot of irony.
Often the performance and its preparation involve
entire families. From time to time the ‘Czeladonka’
are invited to perform at a regional theatre festival
- causing days of big excitement when half the
village has to travel.
Historically the ‘Czeladonka’ were tenants and
workers of rich landlords in the Lublin area. Lubenka
is close to today’s border between Poland and
Belarus. Before Poland lost territory in the East and
was compensated with land in the West as a result
of World War II, Lubenka was in the centre of a
province of inter war independent Poland reaching
far into modern Ukraine’s territory and uniting many
ethnicities with their own vernaculars.
Another linguistic tradition that withstood the
ravage of times is Karczeby. It is a mixture of the
Polish and Belorussian languages, still spoken
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in the East of Poland. ‘Karczebs’ is a vernacular
word for people strongly attached to the land they
cultivated.
A ‘Karczeb’ is also called a stump with roots still
stuck in the earth after the tree had been cut down –
allegorical for the problems the various aggressive
authorities have had with these people, trying to
eradicate or dislocate them. They still stand tall on
their land. When a Karczeb farmer’s life comes to
an end he is buried in his soil, later on tilled by his
children or grandchildren.
The Polish photographer Adam Panczuk has
memorialised these people in two series of black
and white pictures in classic square format. His
East Poland photo project is ongoing, he is also
trying to document the changes in the villages he
visits frequently. He already succeeded in changing
the image of this remote area of Europe from
backward to fantastically spirited and worthy of
protection.
Horst Kloever
First published on the New York Time Lens blog in
May 2009.
Adam Panczuk (born 1978) lives and works in
Warsaw, Poland. He is a graduate of the University
of Economics and the Academy of Fine Arts in
Poznań, Faculty of Multimedia Communication.
Pańczuk’s photographic series have received
international awards, among them the Magnum
Expression Award and the PhotoEspana (PHE)
Ojode Pez Award for Human Values.
www.adampanczuk.pl
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Bostjan Pucelj | Missing in Action
In his series ‘Missing in Action’ a shopping trolley
plays the leading role. Regarding the history of
mankind man’s primal preoccupation seems to
be the perpetual search and invention of new
objects intending to facilitate our everyday life.
This accumulation of objects over time became a
fundamental indicator for prosperity and wealth of
a modern society. The more you have, the better
you are. From this perspective man places himself
always above those objects. But don’t we face the
exact opposite situation these days? The growing
indispensability and ‘fetishization’ of objects gives
them a whole new significance.
The photographs of Bostjan Pucelj describe
exactly these modern relationships between
humans and objects and thus provide an insight
into contemporary society. Thereby the trolley
serves as the perfect incarnation of consumerism
and its implications. But Pucelj does not show us
the trolley in its natural habitat, namely a shopping
mall. Instead the artist shows the trolley in urban
and suburban environments – mostly deserted.
In doing so Pucelj depicts the transitory potential of
trolleys to new situations. The photographs display
trolleys as if being drowned in a river or as if they
had fallen or even been pushed from a bridge.
The artist hereby achieves the impression of crime
scene or evidence photography. He turns them
into crime victims subjected to gross violation. By
humanising the trolleys Pucelj invites the spectator
to enter a story and to consider the conditions and
motivations that could have placed the carts in
their specific situations. He goes one step further
by using the format of a series, suggesting that
the violation of trolleys is not a singular case. In
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fact trolleys seem to be the perfect incarnations of
victims, serving people with an aim for getting rid
of their frustration and placing them at the bottom
of a social scale as unprotected and defenceless
beings who are at the mercy of whoever may come
along. A link in a chain, which served its purpose
and its missing passes usually unnoticed – until
now.
Marie-France Rafael
Bostjan Pucelj (born 1979 in Novo mesto, Slovenia)
lives and works in the Dolenjska region, Slovenia.
Pucelj studied Geodesy at the University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia, before discovering his interest
in photography. His long-term projects concern
critical subjects that post modern society gave rise
to. By now he has shown his photographic work in
several exhibitions and has published three books.
bostjanpucelj.com
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Peter Puklus | New Paintings
The work of Peter Puklus gives a silent and
thoroughly contemporary comment on one of the
questions photography brought into the discussion
of visual media since its invention. Puklus’ thinking
and acting involves photography and video art’s
relation to the ‘classic’ arts like painting.
With the miniaturisation of electronic devices the
integration of digital cameras into mobile phones
was achieved in 1995. Since then taking pictures
has become omnipresent in more situations
than ever before. When using the camera phone
consciously Peter Puklus has references to Dutch
painting on his mind. He prefers classical motifs
like the nude and still life and realises them in the
framework of his daily life with his closest friends,
using the mobile phone as an unobtrusive imaging
device.
The resulting pictures of the New Paintings series
are defined by the display of self confidence of the
portrayed nude woman, subtle story-telling with
the help of still life elements and an ‘old-masterly’
sombreness.
Thanks to the low resolution and imperfections
of camera phones a vibrant grain structure in the
blowups of Puklus’ pictures adds a reference to
some of the early photographic printing techniques
like the dry-plate process from the late 19th
century and thus relates Puklus’ works to those of
Pictorialism.
The photographs of Peter Puklus demonstrate a
very personal way to ‘quote’ from the history of
painting as well as from analogue photography,
but he uses 21st century digital technology to
make contemporary statements about his personal
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environment. Most of his pictures are accompanied
by videos with the same subject set in the same
interiors documenting the formation of his still
pictures, thus adding another sophisticated level of
reflection to his body of work and to the ongoing
debates about origins and references of the art of
photography.
Inga Schneider & Horst Kloever
Peter Puklus (born 1980) is a fine art and editorial
photographer living and working in Budapest,
Hungary. He studied Photography at the MoholyNagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
until 2005 and is now preparing for his PhD. His
works have been published widely in Hungary and
abroad. He recently showed his series ‘Intimacy No Title’ at the Fotofestiwal 2009 in Łódź, Poland.
He participated in different group shows throughout
Europe.
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Vitus Saloshanka | Dreamland
The gleam and the stream of countless, nameless,
tiny villages is trickling out. But suddenly – shoo!
A loud, patterned landscape along the rails of the
bridge: we are crossing the Bug, the border river. It
is here where the railway track gauge widens and
time hurries one hour ahead in eastern direction...
The picture in the window comes to a standstill, the
doors open. A group of uniformed people start to
scatter inside the train. Border guards – passport
control. Within the past 15 years many things have
happened, above all: some borders dissolved.
Border control posts disappeared, new roads
and bridges connected the countries that were
separated before. The ‘East’ shifted further to the
east. Per contra, Belarus stays at its post at the old
frontier established after World War II.
Every time when I approach my home country I am
crossing a border in my mind. A border that has
separated two worlds for a long time now. It used to
be an Iron Curtain, nowadays it is the buffer zone
between united Europe and the real ‘East’. After all,
the next border post in eastern direction is located
on the Russian-Japanese border. Therefore I
am never surprised that in a conversation about
my country of origin people often overhear the
‘White’ that precedes ‘Russia’. Western media
depict the eastern border of the EU as difficult to
cross, if possible at all: White Russia, Belarus, is
usually only mentioned when a new scandal about
Russian petrol or gas comes up, on the occasion
of a new Chernobyl-memorial-year or when
representatives of the Byelorussian opposition are
put behind bars by its president elected again and
again. The country is described as Europe’s last
dictatorship, maintaining the old structures and its
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political ideals. Does this mean that in this country
there is no significant development, no progress,
no substantial change in daily life? Hardly anything
can be learnt in the western press regarding these
aspects.
The picture of my home country as well as my
personal view has been influenced by my stay
in Germany for the last seven years now. This
has possibly alienated me. By means of my
photographic project I am trying to scrutinize my
picture of my home country and to explore and
witness the new appearances there. Therefore I
have crossed its border three times between August
2008 and May 2009 in eastern direction in order to
compile a documentation about urban landscapes,
peripherals and new habitats. ‘Dreamland’ is
a portrait of my home city where some bizarre
encounters of old and new urbanity reflect a new
social divide. Belarus is in limbo between a sovietsocialist past and a yet undefined future, an interim
period of some sort.
Vitus Saloshanka
Vitus Saloshanka (born 1974) lives and works in
Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Saloshanka studied
Law at the State Management Academy Minsk,
Belarus, before pursuing Photographic Studies at
the FH Dortmund, Germany.
vitussaloshanka.com
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Alnis Stakle | Ilgas
Alnis Stakle thematises the manifold meanings and
interconnections of history and the present times
for his homeland Latvia. He critically examines
subcultures, interpersonal relationships and the
human existence as such in his photographic series.
What interests him above all are the economic and
political implications that the dissolution of the
USSR had upon Latvia and the associated cultural
identity crisis. In a documentary and likewise staged
imagery he analyses individual and collective social
experiences. These manifest in an environment
that is distinctly Latvian in his pictures.
In his series ‘Ilgas’ (2010) Stakle shows extraordinary
interiors. The walls are marked by deterioration
and covered with partly childish, partly sketchy but
skilfully done ornamental paintings. Combined with
the depiction of young girls these interiors appear
surreal. The photographs raise many questions by
their grotesque habitus: What function do these
rooms have? Who arranged them like that and who
inhabits them? Despite the portraits of the young
girls, the depleted architecture scarred by the wear
of time and the minimalist décor evokes ideas of
isolation and loneliness. The depiction of structural
elements, in which the erosion already did a great
part of its work creates a climate of melancholia –
of memento mori. It is hard to imagine that those
rooms are inhabited.
Actually the photographs show the Ilgas manor,
which was constructed in 1890 as a baroque
hunting lodge, and today belongs to the Daugavpils
University in Southern Latvia. Students live and
learn here for short terms. The detailed drawings
of insects, leaves affixed to the walls and animal
skulls lying around indicate that these rooms are
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used by their juvenile inhabitants to study nature.
In his series ‘Ilgas’ Alnis Stakle’s main concern is not
the study of architecture, he is far more interested
in the unusual living situation of the students
governed by historical and social circumstances.
By reducing the inventory to only one chair, some
scattered things and capturing an atmosphere of
evanescence, Alnis Stakle creates photographs that
appear like still lives and draw upon the tradition of
Dutch painting of the 17th century.
Anna Nowak
Alnis Stakle (born 1975) lives and works in
Latvia. Stakle studied Environmental Education
at Daugavpils University and pursued at the same
university doctoral studies in an Art Education
Program. Besides his work as a professional
photographer, Stakle gives lectures on photography
at the Daugavpils University and is an expert in
Visual Arts at the Culture Capital Foundation of
Latvia.
alnisstakle.com
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Lilla Szász | Mother Michael goes to heaven
‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family
is unhappy in its own way.’ (Leo Tolstoy, from Anna
Karenina)
Lilla Szász created a family album and a powerful
record of an unhappy love that ended in a suicide.
It is a multilayered true story of the life of Budapest
prostitutes (between 2008 and the beginning
of 2010), a personal chronicle of slowly arising
trust and friendship between the models and the
photographer, supported by the fascinating tension
between the models’ gaze directly into the lens,
and the artist’s desire to turn the camera away from
it and scrutinise the family interior instead.
The photographer carefully records the flat they
live and work in, the pets that form an important
part of family life, the still lives, artificial lights and
colours of the flat. The aim of capturing these
details is to turn the viewer’s attention away from
the tensions within the family (revealed in the text
accompanying the photographs). Lilla builds up the
story very consciously with prevailing tenderness
and deep respect towards the models and their
home. However, the inevitable tragic end can be
sensed throughout the whole story.
Monika comes from a family where she lived ‘an
absolutely normal life’ with her father, a chronic
alcoholic, her brother and grandmother. At the
age of 23 she learnt that her boyfriend ‘visited
whores, and made contact with other girls via chat’.
Becoming a prostitute was Monika’s revenge.
Michael liked Lilla from the very first moment as
the only person from the outside world interested
in him without prejudice. Michael loved Alexander
and was the mother of the family, in which the
other two played the role of the children. Alexander
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grew up in an orphanage and ended up as a gay
prostitute incapable to love. He became the most
enthusiastic model of Lilla addicted to being in the
centre of attention.
Lilla spent a long time with her models. She
became a close friend, somebody from the ‘outside
world’, who was interested in their lives, who would
patiently listen to their problems. She liked them
and her life was also transformed by photographing
them. Once she posed with Alexander as a
prostitute, which brought them even closer.
In the course of the project she ‘wrote down what
they told her – this was their reality, and she took
pictures to show what she thought was her reality-’
She had to redefine words such as normality,
love, abuse, suicide, and she challenges the
viewer to do the same. The day she learnt Michael
committed suicide, Lilla felt nothing but deep grief
and sadness. The script was finished - Michael’s
sudden and tragic death put an end to the story.
Monica went to another brothel; Alexander
disappeared to immediately find another man to
live with. Lilla insists on treating her book not only
as a book on prostitutes. The story of the family Lilla
presents is not usual, but the cause of Michael’s
death is. ‘Could it happen to anybody?’
Katarzyna Majak
Lilla Szász (born 1977) lives and works in Budapest,
Hungary. She studied Art History and Russian
Language and Literature at the Faculty of Arts,
University of ELTE in Budapest. Working on the
edge of socio-cultural themes, Lilla Szàsz received
the Eötvös Fellowship, ICP, New York in 2010.
szaszlilla.hu
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Tehnica Schweiz: Gergely László & Péter Rákosi | Identikit
Identikit pictures are drawn according to the testimonies of eyewitnesses. They are commissioned
by the investigating police inspector in order to
help the search for the offender. The drawings
are made by trained experts (police artists) by
hand or with the help of specialised software.
These pictures are usually based on testimonies
of several eyewitnesses. Their intention is not to
depict the spitting image of the offender, but to
emphasise special characteristics of his/her body
and/or face. The idea behind this is not to find just a
single delinquent but to broaden the search for any
number of people who might match the description,
out of which one might be the possible suspect.
All identikit drawings we used for the Tehnica
Schweiz project Identikit Photographs in the years
2007 to 2010 have been collected from the issues of
the Hungarian police magazine ZSARU published
in the past 5 years. For each drawing we sought
one or more models from our circle of friends and
colleagues who would bear similar characteristics
to the drawn person.
Tehnica Schweiz (TSCH) are concerned with the
political and social influences of the development
of photography as a medium. Our works are critical
towards phenomena in our immediate society
and the media. Some of our work is connected
to communities – discussing, documenting and
catalysing temporary collaborations within selected
groups of people.
Gergely László & Rákosi Péter
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Gergely László (born 1979) and Péter Rákosi (born
1970) started to collaborate in 2004 under the label
of Tehnica Schweiz. All the projects and artworks
they have been involved in, together or separately
since the start of their collaboration, are signed
with this label. Tehnica Schweiz is a member of
POC, an international network of photographers.
TSCH has been working with institutions all over
Europe and internationally, e.g.: ISCP, New York
City; Műcsarnok, Budapest; NBK, Berlin; Witte de
With, Rotterdam; Norwich Gallery, Norwich and
Secession, Vienna.
Gergely László is a founding member and
representative of Lumen Photography Foundation
and Lumen Gallery created in 2002.
photolumen.hu/lgrp
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Zoltán Vancsó | Unintended Light
Zoltán Vancsó is not afraid of space and emptiness
in his photographs. Quite the contrary: in his
photography series ‘Unintended Light’ he captures
the greatness of nature, which he combines with
the smallness of a specific detail. ‘In Vancsó’s
photographs, the topic itself loses its importance
and becomes dissolved in the whole of the
composition. All of the motifs become one element
in the system of the picture and appear to serve
this’, art historian Virág Böröczfy points out. By
choosing a particular frame of the outer world with
his camera Zoltán Vancsó succeeds in creating
a form of sublimated reality in which everything
seems like having been staged for these unique
purpose.
But Zoltán Vancsó does not stage his pictures. They
are wandering at the borders of snapshots, usually
designated as being in the filiation of documentary
photography. The artist seizes a passing moment
in time, which in his photographs remains forever
sustained. His photos evoke modern ideals of
an expressive form, such as Cartier-Bresson’s
‘decisive moment’, but they also express a mental
knack of seeing. A carefully modulated black-andwhite tonality conduces to new ways of perception.
‘Tokyo’ (2008) is an impressive picture in which
light bulbs appear in a cloudy sky over the city of
Tokyo as if by magic. It becomes obvious, that only
a mechanical apparatus, namely the photographic
camera, could create such delusive phenomena.
The poetic tour de force of Vancsó’s work lies
thereby in his metaphysic approach of time and
space, i.e. his perception of time and space trough
an artistic medium. At one extreme he succeeds
in intensifying the vision by depicting the usually
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unseen. At the other he literally electrifies the
spectator by demonstrating his incapacity to see as
well as his capacity to conceive.
Marie-France Rafael
Zoltán Vancsó (born 1972 in Hungary) lives
and works in Budapest, Hungary. He studied
Photography and Sound Engineering. Vancsó used
to work as a reporter for weekly newspapers and
online news portals and is currently a freelancer.
He continuously publishes books (some of
them at Blurb.com) of his photographic series
and shows them regularly in exhibitions. Zoltán
Vancsó has received several professional rewards
like the Rudolf Balogh Award, an André Kertész
Scholarship and a Hungart Scholarship.
photovancso.com
blurb.com/user/vancso
Tokio | Japan, 2008
‘Once light has been born, it contains the potential to be born again.’
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Barcelona | Spain, 2007
‘Alas, the only thing the questions of women are mainly good for are to make frivolous that which men agree are serious, even without words.’
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Pannonhalma | Hungary, 2008
‘We can’t even imagine ‘nothing’ without seeing it. This is our prison but also our freedom. With a bit of imposing, we
could call this the state of original shedding of light.’
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Pacsatüttös | Hungary, 2008
‘Two of our basic nostalgias are: capturing reality and deviating from it.’
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Kamakura | Japan, 2008
‘Something like this. According to memory. And obviously not exactly, just reliably. But it would be difficult to ask anything more of memory than reliability!’
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Tata | Hungary, 2008
‘The superiority of objects is so penetrating that they are always able to project the most significant still images behind
the variations. Those enchanted by existence. And their space is the most endless dead end street into which movement can lock itself.’
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Ancona | Italy, 2008
‘It is lovely when existence slows down. When speed that cannot be increased – adjusting to the precise
thought-visions of Giordano Bruno – unrecognisably blends into motionlessness. Perhaps this is when the mistakes of
sunlight arrange themselves into dusk?’
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Tereza Vlcková | Mirrors Inside
v
Me.
The inner monologue as an internal one of
personality.
Something
purely
introverted.
Personal. Dark.
Everyone has something in them that they’re
scared of. The dark side. The human subconscious
and its intricacies. Nightmares that expel us from
the warmth of our beds in the middle of silence –
darkness – night. The scream that no one hears –
only you (me). An absurd situation that frightens us
with its senselessness and irony, in which you play
the main role in the fatal situation in the middle of
the wondrous theatre.
We’re the very ones that we’re scared of, the ones
we see everyday in the mirror. How much disguises
do we conceal under our mask? We’re chameleons
with a single face. We won’t even reveal our disguise
to ourselves. By constantly searching for ourselves
we disappoint ourselves and those around us…
It’s so hard to answer life’s basic questions.
Who am I? We’ll never answer correctly.
Me.
Tereza Vlčková
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Tereza Vlčková (born 1983 in the Czech Republic)
lives and works in the Czech Republic. Vlčková
studied Photography at the Tomas-Bata-University
in Zlín and at the Silesian University in Opava | The
Institute of Creative Photography. Her work has
already been shown in Czech Republic, Hungary,
Switzerland and France. Her photographic series
‘Two’ and ‘Perfect Day’ have been awarded on
many occasions.
terezavlckova.com
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Mirjana Vrbaski | Seven Verses of Emptiness
A freedom from words is what drew me to photography in the first place. The possibility of saying
things implicitly.
The first time I saw Dürer’s Self-portrait at TwentyEight was in a high school class in Canada. At that
time, my appreciation of Dürer was purely intuitive.
I was struck by his looks and the insight he seemed
to radiate.
The first time I saw a religious icon must have
been during my christening in an orthodox church
in Montreal. But the first icon I remember is my
mother’s icon in Belgrade: an antique Russian
Mary and the Child, intricate silver lining, a wooden
frame with a glass door.
The first photograph that affected me in the same
way an icon did was a photograph of Marshal Tito.
This was in kindergarten in Serbia, at the very end
of the Titoist era, when the Marshall’s portrait hung
prominently in all public places. The omnipresence
of Tito’s face taught me about the capacity of an
iconic image to transcend and idolise. About image
as authority.
However, though all three events are rooted in the
beauty of a motionless face and all three marked
me profoundly, I gradually distanced myself from
the latter two. With time, their rigid contexts –
religious faith in the case of an orthodox icon and
communist ideology in the case of Tito – became
confining.
But to Dürer’s painting I return frequently. To me,
this image is so full of emptiness it almost swells. It
is an image that resonates, that opens a door to an
unspecific universe, an intangible knowledge. An
image that fills me with understanding of something
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that would cease if I put a finger or a name on it.
A place where I can keep wondering; where I can
sense all and nothing.
In my more academic moments, I relate this feeling
to the notion of ‘potentiality’ or the ability of certain
works of art to suggest a potential meaning not
a definite one. To the notion of anticipated rather
than known significance. To the idea that silence is
made of infinite noise.
What I try to do in my photography is create such
a state. Sculpt my sitters inwardly. Reduce everything to a bare minimum until enough hollow space
exists for an echo to occur. No clear thoughts or
definitions to prop the images up. Only an intuitive
response, a mood. A presentiment that thrives on
the possibilities of a silent place.
Mirjana Vrbaski
Mirjana Vrbaski (born 1978 in Montreal, Canada)
lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Having spent the first 16 years of her life in Serbia,
she moved back to Canada in 1994. She studied
English Literature at the University of Guelph in
Ontario and Communications at McGill University in
Montreal. After having worked in communications,
Vrbaski moved to the Netherlands to complete a
Bachelor of Photographic Studies at the Royal
Academy of Art in The Hague.
mirjanavrbaski.com
Girl, 2009
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Judith, 2010
Hannah, 2010
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Vivianne, 2010
Britt, 2010
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Jeditah, 2010
Nare, 2008
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Piotr Zbierski | White Elephants
Piotr Zbierski tells black and white stories. He
captures the volatility of everyday life with his camera.
His narrations are about insatiable curiosity. In the
tradition of street photography and travel reportage
he uses his camera as a notebook. He gives
himself up to the spontaneity of the moment and
depicts the hazard. By anticipating and facing the
immediate he succeeds to catch the ‘fugitive truth’
which exists only for a short moment. Therefore
every single of his photographs works like an ‘objet
trouvé’. It conveys a notion of freedom, which is
constituted in the composition of particular scenes
as well as in the search for new visual possibilities.
Piotr Zbierski replaces the technically perfect
picture by a new kid of imagery. His photographs
distinguish themselves by emphasising unusual
details and distorting perspectives in the picture
frame as well as the image plane.
The series ‘White Elephants’ is shaped by three
years of travelling to various countries and places
like India, Ukraine, Moldova, Berlin, Lissabon and
Piotr Zbierski’s hometown of Łódź. Looking at
his pictures of children playing, backyards, street
scenes and scenarios of conflict one can sense
the artist’s need to snap a moment of time and
reality. He uses only the available light so that
some photographs happen to be underexposed or
blurred, grainy or fuzzy. He deliberately plays with
these technical imperfections to establish a direct
relationship to the photographed human beings
and a proximity to the depicted situations. By doing
so he succeeds in expressing the uniqueness of
the well-chosen people, objects and sceneries.
Also he creates suspense and a certain drama that
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is palpable in the scenes. Furthermore he stresses
his subjective position. Each photograph is thereby
a document of his individual experience: ‘Here I
am now, my camera, the person to be portrayed
- and nothing else matters in that very moment’.
In the photographs of the series ‘White Elephants’
Piotr Zbierski constructs his version of reality and
interprets the world in his own private and very
emotional way.
Anna Nowak
Piotr Zbierski (born 1987) lives and works in
Poland and abroad. He studied Photography at the
world famous PWSFTviT (National Film & Photo
School) in Łódź and is travelling constantly. He had
several group and solo exhibitions with his ‘White
Elephants’ in Warsaw, Budapest and Zurich.
lightstalkers.org/piotr02
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Barbora Žurková & Radim Žurek
The brave new world of the Replacements
o
o
Things are not always what they seem in the works
of Barbora Žůrková and Radim Žůrek. And this
is also true for their series ‘The Replacement’. At
first sight their images show highly stylised and
beautifully executed portraits of children on the
brink of adolescence. Yet, when examining the
photographs closer, the children suddenly appear
vaguely familiar. And it is then that the viewer
discovers that all of the children bear a certain
similarity to celebrities - people in the public eye
such as actors, singers, sportsmen and women.
So who are those boys and girls? Are the images
portraits of the celebrities when they were children,
do they show the real offspring of the celebrities or
just any children who happen to look like a certain
celebrity?
For people familiar with the work of Barbora Žůrková
and Radim Žůrek, it may come as no surprise that
those children are in fact digital clones of their
famous alter ego: the boys and girls portrayed in
the pictures do not exist in real life. The couple
used portraits of real children and painstakingly
added the face of a celebrity to the image to create
a new person – a digital clone.
Cloning - and the sociological and psychological
issues surrounding this topic - has been explored
photographically by Žůrková and Žůrek in previous
works. And while the digital clones only exist
on paper or computer, with their sheer visual
existence the artists encourage us to think about
the consequences of having a human clone. What
does it mean for a person, who each has their own
unique identity and personal history, to suddenly be
faced with their clone – their replacement?
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On the other hand, how does it feel to be this clone,
lacking an individual identity, personal history and
memories, being just a replacement of the real
person?
Žůrková and Žůrek try to show the viewer how
it must feel. They say that ‘as the replacement
individuals become adults, they find themselves
in an inhospitable land, searching for their own
history. They are fearful, confused, sometimes full
of hope, but ultimately disappointed again.’ The
replacements have no own history. They are what
they are: just a replacement of the real person.
This feeling is reflected in the composition, colour
scheme and atmosphere of each photograph: the
barren and dull landscape, the children’s faces
– while still beautiful – display a certain kind of
loneliness and sadness. The brave new world of
the replacements does not seem to be a good one
Dr. Anne Meuter
Barbora Žůrková (born 1987) and Radim Žůrek
(born 1971) are a duo of artists living and working
in Prague, Czech Republic. Žůrková and Žůrek
both studied Photography at the Prague School
of Photography, before continuing their studies
at the Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian
University, Opava. Their work has already been
shown in Germany, The Netherlands, Great Britain
and The United States.
zurkovi.com
Boris Becker
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Björk
Harrison Ford
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Scarlett Johansson
Anna Kournikova
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Bruce Lee
Christopher Walken
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Copyright notice: © Horst Kloever, photeur.net and the respective authors of all
photographs and texts in this book. Berlin, Germany 2010