Fotograf Magazine

In the Nineties, it seemed that we heard nothing about Slovak impromptu and documentary photography for a long time (outside the master of Slovak documentary Karol Kallay, only the work of Andrej Bán seemed to have distinct features) but the beginning of a new century, surprisingly, brought several striking personalities of the young generation to public notice. This happened mostly due to efforts of the organizations Slovenský dokument (Slovak Documentary) and the Institut pro veřejné otázky (Institute for Public Questions) in Bratislava – apart from preparing annual sociological reports, these initiated a one-year grant program for the photographic documentation of contemporary Slovakia. Already the first year (2001) brought significant success. It introduced Martin Kollár and his movement away from traditional topics. He stressed the importance of color photography and sarcastic humor, hardly acceptable for traditional humanistic photography. Thus, he became a forerunner of and at the same time inspiration to several other photographers: Lucia Nimcová, Andrej Balco and Josef Ondzik. Unil then, color pictures with a humorous and/or ironic undertone were done only by Mišo Suchý, a Slovak living in the United States.