Jitka Hanzlova/ Rokytnik

image by
Jitka Hanzlova
Rokytnik,
1990-1994

Jitka Hanzlova and I studied both in Essen.
She began her studies a few years later than I did.

Of course we got to know each other.
 

 

You could have seen here a sequence of images by Jitka Hanzlova…but now you can´t anymore,

 

 

I was asked by BILDKUNST.DE

to delete the images by
(these were the names spelled out)

 

Loretta Lux,
Man Ray,
Valie Export,
August Sander
Lotte Reiniger

 

and every other artist represented by them or to pay a fee for publishing their images.
They represent around 126 000 artists from around the world.

 

I am working on this blog for my fun,
and for the enjoyment of people interested in photography and art.
There is no income generated whatsoever by this site for me.

Many of the images I use here are floating all over the net,
other images I scanned to upload them to my blog.
To share them, to enrich the world with the work of artists I do admire.

No, my blog is not important.

But it is part of what I would call our common wealth.

 

I don´t think that I am the source of income losses for the artist,
or anybody else.

 

Art as part of everyday life,
art easily accessible by everybody without barriers and fees,
art as part of the free flow of thoughts and
communication.

 

But not in the case of artist represented by Bild-Kunst.

 

 
Anyway: as I went back to my childhood roots with my first project
(remembering 1987-1993), so did Jitka Hanzlova too.
But differently.

While she went back to photographe in her hometown,
I was looking for the feelings,
moods and colors of my childhood memories.

Her stage was a fixed one.
I had to look for mine…

I found it in formerly communist part of Germany.
Eastern colors like in Hungary.
But still Germany, the country I was born in.

Fictional home country.

Jitka Hanzlova was taking images in a small village,
she was taking images of the “simple life”.
Everyday landscapes, nothing spectacular,
but still beautiful.

Small house, summer and winter. Kids playing.
A place you could dream yourself being home,
instantly knowing there is no way back to a life that has gone,
if you ever have lived it.

Quiet images. Nothing complicated.
Not using journalistic, nor documentary language.
That was new that time.

Her Rokytnik images have the taste of childhood memories:
those wonderful hot days of summer,
completely absorbed in the games you played,
forgetting about yourself,
people around you, all familiar faces.
Feeling secure,
just faint hints
from a more complicated world of the grown ups.

Time has gone…

Jitka Hanzlovas book is out of print.
Her Rokytnik images hard to find.
Reason enough to show here some of her images.