Sunday, July 20, 2008

Photographs Do Not Bend presents: Contemporary Czech Photography

By Pegasus News wire

Image provided by Photographs Do Not Bend

Hana Jakrlova, In the Moment, 2007

Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery explores new Eastern European photography from the Czech Republic. This group exhibition represents the trends of photography entrenched in a region that has a strong history in the visual arts.

In the period of Modernism (between the wars WWI + WWII), film, photography and painting flourished in Europe. Prague became an art center that rivaled Paris and Berlin. The Czech avant-garde created new ways of seeing light, objects, and moments in time.

Modernist artists Joseph Sudek (1896-1976) and Frantisek Drtikol (1883-1961) both influenced the work of Milan Fano Blatny, Igor Malijevsky, and Vojtech V. Slama. Each of these young artists chose traditional formats in black and white. Each draw from moments in time that question our visual perception. Objects transcend beauty and pauses in time offer surreal lyrical compositions.

Photomontage, photograms, and multiple exposures were used frequently by the Czech Modernists. This can be seen as an influence in the photograms by Gabriela Kolcavova. Her spare images of hair gathered from friends become expressive compositions of line.

Image provided by Photographs Do Not Bend

Evzen Sobek, Untitled (Life in Blue), 2007

The emergence of the Czech Republic from the Iron Curtain has opened the door to the west. Traditions have been broken as seen in the work of Hana Jakrlova. Her rich color photographs reveal a twisted new internet business. Hana documents people having free sex with prostitutes only by promising to be filmed in the act for pay-per-view websites. Her graphic images of these almost comical amateurs offer a trend in photography that is possibly more accepted in Europe than the U.S.

And finally, Evzen Sobek's portraits of vacationers at a waterfront reveal another trend in contemporary portraiture. Sobek's subjects hold large fish, posing in their skimpy bathing suits, or emerge from water like sea creatures, covered in plant debris. This use of portraiture to celebrates the subject performing common pastimes as seen in earlier work by Neal Slavin (1941, American born), an artist that PDNB Gallery currently represents.

All artists in this group exhibition reveal exciting directions in photography from this region and the overall movement in the art world.

Source: Photographs Do Not Bend

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