In the shadow of photography by Magda Stanová (August 22, 2009) 
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
Categories / Mixed Media / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / Comments Off
curator statement - Roman Babjak on Magda Stanová
Everyone who sees an exhibition or book of Magda’s recent work and spends some moments thinking about the medium of photography must be touched by this work. We can call it a children's book for grown ups. Something like the Little Prince from Exupery, but then in the photographic world. The questions raised by Magda are very mature, smart and deep, and at the same time childishly pure. Every question goes deeply into the sense of our existence. Magda asks herself and us: why do we take pictures? What is the meaning of photography? Interestingly Magda had problems graduating from the photographic department of the Bratislava arts academy, as her work was anti-photographic. Sic... she was nominated for the Discovery Award in Arles this year. And I am really happy for her success. Roman Babjak is the curator and editor of photo.sittcom.sk, a web based project aimed at discovering and presenting young artists from Central and Eastern Europe working with video and photography.
Next / A Contagious Spirit Of Improvisation / Previous / /
Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
The project In the Shadow of Photography is eminently photographical in a twofold sense: it talks about a presence which is also an absence, in the sense that it reflects on the medium of photography with very few actual photographs; and it considers its own self-reference in a natural, innate way, without forcing any awkward situations.
This reflection is carried out from an essential yet (or possible necessarily) invisible position. It considers the way in which the appearance, democratisation and extension of photography has changed our social behaviour.
This set of twenty-eight objects includes drawings, photographs taken from printed media, a book, a camera, a back-projected animation onto the edges of a frame identical to that used for the other works.
Everything is explained and yet remains open, in a kind of subtle suspense, much like the title of the installation itself. We live and behave under the influential, omnipresent shadow of photography and yet increasing it doesn’t serve as much to describe us as to make us players in a life completed by the fiction created by its scenes (introduction by Álvaro de los Ángeles)
Artist statement For me, art is a way to communicate little things that I have found out about the world. These are usually banal details from daily life, in which resides some hidden poetry. During six years of studying photography at the art academy my interest has moved away from the “pure” photograph and focused upon the snapshots that people take of family, friends, holidays, vacations, and group images. Snapshots have an enormous value for the person who is either a part of, or somehow related to, the people or place that has been photographed. But how does a photograph get this value? Why is photography such a fascinating medium?
In the visual essay, entitled In the Shadow of Photography, I attempt to answer these questions. The work consists of three chapters. The first is searching for the specifics of photography; the second investigates the photographic world; and the third is examining how people's behavior and thinking have changed since the invention of photography. The work is including topics such as: photography as a time traveling machine; why a person has a stage fright while being photographed; how the present is becoming a stage for the future; or how are we loosing the possibility to get an authentic memory from a photographic attempt to conserve it.
These reflections are presented through the mediums of drawing, text, collages, photographs, objects and animation.
Magda Stanová (1981) lives and works in San Francisco, USA.
Click weblink magdastanova.sk or browse our archives
Out now! 50pm new issue
Sports Issue Magazine App
Posted in category 658
