One summer in 2008, Trevor Paglen and an amateur satellite watcher named Ted Molczan led viewers in a Toronto gallery outside and directed them to look skyward. But their gaze was not aimed at stars, or at least not natural stars; instead, they were trying to locate a classified American reconnaissance satellite, Keyhole-11…
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At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, a wave of movements that were to determine the thrust of European creation in the field for the next few decades hit the art scene. Whether the older minimalist groups like Zero and Fluxus; the happenings of Nam June Paik, Emmet Williams and the like; the individualist mythology of Joseph Beuys or the new approaches in painting of Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, all of these movements were fundamental in the development of contemporary art…
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Few living artists can equal the international fame attained by Eva & Adele. For ten years now these artists have formed one single hermaphroditic character. They have captured attention with their public appearances at all the big contemporary art happenings – the Venice and Lyon Biennials, the openings of Documenta and Manifesta, not to mention nearly all the major contemporary art fairs around the globe…
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The results of the collaboration dating back to 1986 between Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák are in almost perfect harmony with the principle governing the medium they use: they are obvious at first glance and yet often contain a quite subversive and even conspiratorial subtext which radically puts in doubt and quiets first reactions to their work…
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Any discussion of the photographs of Aziz + Cucher necessarily starts and ends outside of the field of photography. It is not just that in creating their images the couple uses traditional ‘analogue’ photographs solely as a ‘raw material’ that is later reworked in a computer into the final image…
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When in May 2005, Martin Barlow, the director of the Oriel Mostin Gallery in Llandudlno, opened the exhibition of Peter Finnemore (born 1963) at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, he voiced in his speech a significant insight, saying that there exists at least one level on which the Czech viewer can relate to a Welsh one, this being the similar historical fate of two small nations exposed to political pressure from a powerful neighbor…
Read moreOriginally from Cairo, the UK-based photographer Naglaa Walker is a less visible member of a strong generation of artists born at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.
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In the years 1933—1945, painter and theoretician Václav Zykmund (1914-1984) was also active as a photographer. From functionalist diagonals of urban scenery, he evolved towards freer style of work and experiments inspired by Surrealism…
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On the other hand, Kulik reacts to a completely different situation both in politics and art than the aforementioned artists had addressed. There are further differences, but there remains a basic artistic mood or temperament that is very similar…
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In one of his essays on the heterogeneous identity of Latin America, the Cuban critic and curator Gerardo Mosauera broods over the local transformation of circulating signs, citing as an example the metamorphoses undergone by one of the pillars of American popular culture, the Coca-Cola soft drink: a famous mixed drinks recipe decrees that it be mixed with Cuban rum, a slice of lemon and ice…
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This characteristic self-depiction can easily be compared with the work of her friend, Tracey Emin, and, in 1993, the two artists collaborated on The Shop in Bethnal Green. However, their work is essentially different…
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While in the 1980‘s (especially in the latter half) his artistic sensibility acutely reflected the tension of shifting from wild neo-expressionism towards semiotic fragmentariness, with the advent of „social washiness“ in the 1990‘s his work moved towards installation and photography…
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Mimetic behavior should be considered as conditio humana, but it is only in the difference between the imitation and the imitated that individuality really comes into being, and if we are speaking about art, the imaginative or creative quality…
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Markéta Othová (1968) has never taken good “photos”, and nor has she cared to. Her intention has always been, and remains, quite the opposite. Through “photos” she tries to discover and make accessible a vision that will always remain purely her own…
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“Following a diary can carrry you across centuries, and suddenly you breathe that time alongside the author, and can almost touch it. With photographs it is even easier than with the written word, as an image needs no translation, it is the simplest of languages…
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Juraj Lipscher (b. 1948) (http://www.lipscher.ch) is a college professor in Baden, Switzerland. In the mid-1990s he had an enticing exhibition entitled “Distant Times and Distant Places” in the now stagnant Czech industrial center of Kladno…
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Jan Svoboda (1934–1990) became a legend of Czech photography already in his lifetime. Not even fifteen years after his death, this legend has achieved a near-Faustian dimension, which gradually begins to obscure the work of its creator…
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The first photograph that I saw by Andreas Weinand, which must have been fifteen years ago now, depicted depraved-looking young people at some sort of heavy metal party. It had been taken on a Christmas Eve in the late 1980s…
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Josef Moucha (b. 1956 www.gallery.cz) studied television and film jour- nalism at Charles University; however, he never worked in those fields. Instead he devoted himself to photography, exhibiting his work and writing on photography…
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The American artist and author of the monographs Grapevine (1997) and Trip (2000) was never engaged with documentary in the true sense of the word, even though the former series of photographs in particular (of the residents of the town of Hollow in West Virginia, taken between 1988 and 1993) at least formally bears some features of the documen- tary genre…
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A piece of white paper stuck to a formica wall. A none too pretty photo, sort of greyish, sad, depressing, full of ambiguity. Why is this note for Sue here? Who is Sue? Where is Sue? Not even she herself knows…
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There are few personalities among contemporary photographers as popular, influential and respected (as well as so frequently criticized) as Martin Parr. This is not due solely to his own extensive body of work, which has played and continues to play a major role in the evolution of both British and international documentary photography, influencing countless photographers worldwide, but also thanks to his other activities…
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In her most famous photographs, Graciela Iturbide captured grand and graceful women. One of these she called Mujer Ángel (Woman Angel) and thus transformed her into a symbol of the Native American people of the Sonora desert in northern Mexico…
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Each photograph in the collection Views from the Window of My Flat is important, and not solely from the point of view of aesthetics. Taken together, they reveal something more than a mere interest in variations on a rewarding theme…
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“Art is but one, and a deadly serious one at that; but only very few people
actually understand it. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a painting,
a play, or a drawing on a frosted window…
In 1977, the American photographers Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel published their book Evidence. The book consisted of 79 photographs which the photographers had chosen fromf two million images found in archives of state agencies, scientific research centers, police departments, fire departments, space research centers, private corporations etc…
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Annu, we met for the first time in Fotofest Houston in 1998. Your work was already impressive to me by that time. I was pleased to see how quite conceptual work could also be beautifully done – I mean you were taking care not only about the meaning but each of your double sitting of Indian From India was perfectly elaborated, the prints were carefully toned to match original Edward Curtis photographs…
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The position of Stefan Hunstein (born 1957) on the German photography scene is indeed unique. In fact, he is only called a photographer because of the difficulty involved in properly placing him within the visual arts…
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Jaroslav Rössler (1902-1990) continues to return to the pages of Fotograf. This is because he for a long time remained the neglected giant of the inter-war avant-garde, and as a result there is still much to be discovered in his work…
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The photographic work of Finnish artist Elina Brotherus is founded on the intertwining of reflection and construction. Her trademark approach is the introduction of personal mythologies and feminine topics into landscape photography…
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Jan Ságl (born 1942) works across all genres, but his landscapes are the most visible part of his many photographic activities. His relationship to this theme reaches deep into the past and continues until today – it is a stable and fervent interest of his, but it has not made him a committed landscape photographer who believes only in genuine natural sceneries…
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The name of Jiří Šigut (1960) first appeared in Fotograf magazine two years ago. The following interview therefore retroactively turns the review of his exhibition at the Moravian Gallery in Brno and its sixty-page catalogue Záznamy (Records) published in issue 4/2004 into a sort of preface…
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For the first time, Magdalena Jetelová has taken her measures on nothing less than the earth and the development of earth history in her Iceland Project (1992). Iceland is situated on the Central Atlantic Shelf which runs on the bottom of the ocean on a length of approximately 15,000 kilometers and forms the separating line between the continents of America on one side and Europe and Africa on the other side…
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When I saw your last exhibition – a collection of portraits of members of the theatre group Teatr Novogo Fronta – I had the feeling that I could see there the culmination of a certain tendency that had been apparent in your work for some time…
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Photography may make distant events appear closer but it may also distance and veil those that are near. The long and complex history of the photographic medium’s use in political and social propaganda raises many questions…
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For me personally, your name was a new discovery thanks to the article in European Photography in 1995. I thought to myself, a Czech émigré, she probably doesn’t know where she belongs anymore; she’s looking for her roots, like so many others in the world … But even back then your photographs made an impression on me; although seemingly banal, I couldn’t get them out of my mind…
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In Czech culture, the name Karel Novák is legendary, linked in particular with the school years of his student Josef Sudek, but not, however, with his own art work.
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From the beginning of her career as an artist, Milena Dopitová has been linked directly with feminism, even though – like most intelligent Czech women – she dislikes this label. In this country, it is often associa-ted with a kind of “American” militant feminism, in spite of the fact that nobody has had any experience of that, either…
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Among Czech photographers, Jiří Poláček is one of the most straightforward: by his life story, demeanour and his own fine photography that he has cultivated only when he’s had the time and the mood…
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The German photographer Thomas Kellner (born 1966, Bonn) ranks among the world’s eminent photographers of architecture. He developed an original method of photographing buildings, achieving an unmistakable form of expression – the buildings in his photographs give the impression of dancing…
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One cannot term Jaroslav Beneš (1946) a photographer of architecture, even though it is almost exclusively architecture that provides the subject matter for the realization of his photographic vision…
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The Dutch artist Edwin Zwakman, a graduate of the Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten Rotterdam (1993) and the Rijksakademie Amsterdam (1997), was born in The Hague in 1969. He is often labeled as the follower of conceptualist photographers such as Cindy Sherman or Jeff Wall…
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Drahomír Josef Růžička (Trhová Kamenice 1870 – 1960 Long Island) zprostředkoval českým fotografům zkušenosti nabyté v USA. Mezi světovými válkami šířil model, který se mu osvědčil jako činorodému účastníku fotografických salonů…
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Ever since Walter Benjamin recognised the relation between politics and aesthetics by blaming Fascism for introducing aesthetics into political life and Communism for politicizing art, the link between the artistic and the political has become an inevitable point of the discussion in troubled periods and regions…
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Things come full circle. I am writing on a theme that adopts the strategy and the sorrow of proximity. At the same time, I have never been so far removed from the artist, after nine essays dedicated to her work, and after ten pre-erotic, or post-erotic years spent together in the shadow of a begotten daughter…
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The nude image of a girl, intensely lit up from above by the light of a ceiling lamp. She is reclining on an old wooden bench inside an ancient cabin. The smooth white curves of her fresh young body – seemingly laid down at random but at the same time consciously arranged in a slightly unnatural position – contrast sharply with the rough structure of the wood…
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So much has been written about Miroslav Tichý over the course of three years that, for many, he has undeservedly quickly found his place alongside famous Czech photographers such as Josef Sudek or František Drtikol…
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Two monographs have been dedicated to the photographic legacy of the painter, set designer, illustrator, poet, collage artist, biographer and art critic Jindřich Štyrský (1899–1942). The earlier of these, Jindřich Štyrský /fotografické dílo/1934–1935 (Jindřich Štyrský /photographic oeuvre/ 1934–1935) featured one hundred illustrations and was brought out in June 1982 for the internal use of the Jazz Section of the Musicians’ Union by the art historian Anna Fárová, at the time banned from publishing, and thus concealed under her mother’s maiden surname, Annette Moussu…
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Pokud jde o spojení performance a fotografie, patříš v 90. letech jistě k nejvýraznějším osobnostem. Mám na mysli především sérii tvých fotografií, v nichž jsi se proměnil v Mikiho – rockového zpěváka nebo v Batmana…
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Irwin’s project called Like to Like (2003–2004) consists of six largescale color photographs presenting actions and projects in landscape. For anyone familiar with Slovene art after 1945, the images are easily recognizable as projects of the group OHO…
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There was big retrospective of your work in September 2000 – Performing Light – what was the idea behind it to invite different curators from different countries? What their selection have taught you about your work? Does it differ according to their nationality?
The exhibition you refer to was held at the Foundation De Appel in Amsterdam…
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(11 May 1976, Prague, Strelecky ostrov – 10 March 2007, London, Tate Modern)
When the theoretician Pavlína Morganová from the Science Workshop of the Academy of the Arts in Prague was preparing her project to map out the Czech contemporary art scene, she had no idea what reaction it would have…
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What brought you to Prague in the 1970s? Why did you stay here and begin taking photographs?
After completing my school leaving exams in Zurich, I didn’t know what I wanted to do…
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On 7 October 1985 Christine Furuya Gössler jumped from the window of her Berlin apartment located on the ninth floor. The work that her husband, Seiichi Furuya, a Japanese photographer living in Europe since 1973, created talks
in a large part about her…
I have known Michal Kalhous for a number of years. I remember his first pictures from the beginning of the 1990s; his first exhibits. He is an important representative of his generation: his works have criticallyacclaimed value…
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Simon Roberts (1974) is a British documentary photographer, whose works are based on observing so-called social maps. He chooses his environments based on specifically-defined societal unrest or intensive activities…
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Czech photography is interwoven with legends. Some of them are even more enchanting due to the fact that you can meet them in person. One of these is Dagmar Hochová, the first lady of Czech documentary photography…
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There are people, who stick in your mind. One meeting with Vilém Kříž on 26 February 1990 will always stay in my memory. I had the feeling that this not-so-large, scrawny man, who radiated energy, was made mainly of high-voltage nerves endangering his bodily container…
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Filip Turek’s photographic, or more precisely image-based work, is closely related to his other creations, whether they are objects, videos or performances. Their premise is seemingly simple: a photographic image, whether found, digitally-manipulated or created personally by the artist, is to be transferred into a context other than the one in which it would normally function…
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Our paths have crossed many times; we have many common experiences from the days prior to the fall of Communism and after as well. How would you define the main changes that have taken place in Czech photography since the system changed?
I don’t know if it would be prudent to separate Czech photographers from other artists…
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Much has already been written about photographer, Peter Župník, and his involvement in the generational sub-grouping, “Slovak New Wave”. The latter through its activities at Prague’s FAMU in the mid-1980s stirred up the, until then, calm waters of Czechoslovak creative photography…
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One of the key topics for the pioneering generation of feminist artists in the late 1960s / early 1970s was the exploitation of the female body. Martha Rosler – American photographer, performance artist, videoartist, curator and photo theorist – was among those, who addressed this problem…
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Woody and Steina Vasulka rank among the pioneers of electronic art. Originally European artists (Woody hails from Brno and Stein from Reykjavik – both met during their studies in Prague), have lived in the USA since the mid-1960s…
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If there’s something that characterises contemporary photography, it’s the intersection and crossing borders of narrowly-defined genres and also the evening out the surfaces of so-called high and low art…
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There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
H…
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Photographer, Philippe Jarrigeon, developed his own strategy for shooting fashion photography without people. At last, no production problems due to the human factor, no exhausting selection processes and no long hours spent ordering people around and producing, explaining one’s vision…
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Your name is often mentioned in Czech photography over the span of the last three decades…
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The moment of looking at a photograph is an act of infiltrating the artist’s presence, to the environment and thoughts, which are tied to a personal world. Besides these aspects photography is a non-handicraft, serially reproducable medium, as well as industrial design…
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Fred Kramer has held a place in the field of fashion photography of the 1950s and 1960s similar to that of Jindřich Brok, a year his senior and also a graduate of glass photography studies at the State Graphics School in Prague…
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