Jitka Hanzlova defected from the communist regime and settled in Essen, West Germany. Her work is a constant pursuit of the relationship between the individual and the context in which he/she lives. The exhibition begins with Rokytnik, the village where she grew up in Czech Eastern Bohemia. She took the photographs between 1990 - 1994 after the fall of communism when she was able to return. The village was still old-fashioned and living in the past. The images evoke her childhood, a time long past and is a mixture of landscapes and portraits.
The second part of the exhibition is entitled Bewohner (German for inhabitants). She took the pictures between 1994 and 1996. They feature Berlin and Essen but also other european cities. They are pale and old-fashioned photographs and again evoke a time long past. They are a mix of portraits and cityscapes.
The exhibition moves on to Forest, produced between 2000 and 2005. It continues the cycle of work about the village where she grew up; it is the forest of her childhood. The pictures are largely landscapes and make the forest appear dark and gloomy, a place of dreams and nightmare. I think that she looks back to her childhood nostalgically and refers to the experiences of her youth, but, she says that the forest has a powerful existential quality- as life source, as the darkness in which we sometimes find ourselves and from which we emerge into light. Does she refer to a childhood and youth repressed by a communist regime? For her the forest is critical to human survival, for the exchange of oxygen, the cultivation of flora and fauna and the growth of micro-organisms.
Flowers 2008 onwards are wonderful still lifes. They are beautifully lit and reminiscent of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe. I liked one, in particular, of a dying delicate flower in beautiful oranges set against a velvety black background. In this section she recalls the fleeting nature of existence and the inevitability of death. It also relates to the influence of the renaissance portrait in which black backgrounds were used to intensify the luminosity of the subject.
Brixton 2002 comprises photographs of Afro-Caribbean women against the backdrop of the urban environment.
Section six of the exhibition is entitled "Here" and the pictures were taken in 1998 and from 2003 - 2010. They are photographs of Essen and capture the detail of a western industrialized city being taken back by nature, seen in images of stunted vegetation, cracked walls and isolated buildings. Again they are pale and nostalgic, like faded 1960s transparencies.
Horses, taken from 2007 onwards are unusual portraits of the subjects from strange angles and odd close-ups. Not my style at all.
The final part of the exhibition is entitled "There is Something I Don't Know" and the photographs are taken betyween 2000 and 2012. They are all portraits inspired by the renaissance tradition of portraiture. They are the product of an intimate rapport between the subject and the photographer. They are brighter, more saturated than other images in the exhibition and for me more appealing. Again, as with many other protraits, many are not making eye contact with the camera. I mention this only as some protraits that I took for People and Place were criticised by my (then) tutor for not making eye contact.
Largely the pictures in this exhibition are not to my taste. Although often nostalgic I often find the ideas behing the images quite dark. I am reminded to a degree of some of the work of William Egglestone, perhaps early Martin Parr and to some extent Joel Meyerowitz. I am much more attracted to the rich colours and black and whites of Galen Rowell, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. Despite this I found the exhibition interesting. It certainly worked from the perspective that it gor me thinking: did she have a dark childhood, are the images deliberately undersaturated to give a nostalgic feel, does she remember her youth with fondess or dislike.
What have I learned?
I suppose that I haven't learned that not all photography is to my taste and nor should it be, but it has reinforced this in my mind. It also pointed out that photography, even landscape photograhy, can be used as a social commentary and as a form of autobiography.
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