Usually I am not blogging about myself.
But I am happy to have had this success in Braga, Portugal.
And I am happy that I am finally able to enjoy this kind of, this my success.
With my first project “remembering”, I was still a student then, I had received 1990 “The Scholarship for Contemporary German Photography of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung”.
As a child I had been brought up, that I am nothing but a thoroughly average person, and in this family of mine, being average equaled to being worthless.
So the recognition I got through the years for my projects, I could enjoy them for a moment, and then the doubts came back and I started torturing myself again. My self-esteem was so low, that I never even thought pushing my work into this strange universe of art-business. The exhibitions I had were brought to me on a silver tablet.
Now looking back those years, I see, and I believe, and I know this is a quite egocentric position of mine, that my first project, “remembering”, was a trendsetting one.
Jitka Hanzlova had studied the same years as I did at the same school I did, and she did get inspired by my work to find a language of her own. She won 1993 with her first and fine project “Rokytník” the Otto-Steinert Price.
This was the starting point of her career, that she has deserved, but the painful part for me all these years was, that again and again, when showing my portfolio, I was asked, if I know Jitka Hanzlovas work. As if she had a patent on this kind of image.
For my part I think that “Rokytník” and “remembering”, though bearing similarities in form and the main focus on children, are different in their use of visual language, different in mood and and different in content.
But even in this professional world of curators and gallery owners the differences were not seen and if, then they were not mentioned.
And of course, I didn´t make my work seen. I guess I was no easy person to deal with. Maybe I am still not. In the world of art, the artist and his oeuvre, and to put it differently, the artist and his product are one. If the artist doubts himself and his work, his product becomes doubtful. Who is going to buy a car the dealer signals it could be broken.
Besides Jitka Hanzlova, there were others to come. Good artists, with fine projects.
Working with teens, and kids, in color, later in black and white, seemingly simple images, but focused and on the point. Focusing on emotions or just the outfit, cool or romantic, these kind of images had become a trend.
My ongoing project “Mrs. Raab wants to go home.” has been rewarded now, as mentioned above, with the “International Photography Award – EMERGENTES DST – BRAGA (PT), 2011”.
I will publish it, as soon it´s finished.
