vita

For me as a photographer’s and filmmaker’s son, photography has never been anything out of the common. That our flat’s smallest room had been converted into a darkroom certainly contributed to my perception. Films where developed in it, enlargements made, be it in black and white, be it in color. Both my parents were involved in this activity and I was watching them as a small boy. I have vivid memories of this “red darkness” and the smells of chemicals to this day. The prints hung to dry on the kitchen’s whitewashed walls always drew my attention.
I usually spent the summer vacations in the High Tatra mountains where my father shot most of his films and stills. Our family was part of his film crew and so I picked up the basics of photography rather incidentally.
When I started taking pictures myself I can’t remember. But since 1972 I have been photographing, if with phases of varying intensity, almost constantly. Short breaks have been few and far between.
In retrospect I notice that I have focused on two basic subject-matters: One of these is Landscapes, wherein Trees probably make up a sub-category.
The other topic is more difficult to describe. It is about “Discoveries in the Ordinary”. These are pictures, often close-ups, of something we see daily and of places or scenes we frequently enter or pass by: Water, sand, mud, grass. In summer or in wintertime; dry, wet or frozen solid.