Fotograf Zone – Barbora Bačová

These photographs capture minor situations related to food and eating. Popping sunflower seeds at a bus stop is just as charming as eating beef tongue for the first time. At age eleven, I photographed my father cooking fish on a red-hot grill. In addition to my experience of the scenery of a magical holiday evening, it was also a documentary record of a beautiful, visually rich atmosphere. I believe our relationship to food is a personal matter that can be more important than we think.

Barbora Bačová

is a Slovak photographer, born on in Košice. She studied photography at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art in University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. Her work is dominated by authentic recording of everyday situations with poetic-geometric narrative overlaps. The themes touch on temporality, imagination, fiction, and the search for new image contexts (re-evaluation of image). Informal documentary images are diversified with abstract or stylized „cut-outs“ of everyday colors". The conscious disruption of the timeline opens up the possibility of individual interpretation, which the viewer can understand as he or she wishes - without time constraints. Barbora in recent years is interested in the relationship between the static image and the moving image. Her inspiration often comes from eastern Slovakia, personal experience, the theme of growing up and aging, home, landscape, spending leisure time and health care. She has participated in group exhibition projects in France, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic and others. She participated in Pla(t)form 2020 in the Swiss Fotomuseum Winterthur, where she was selected along with 42 artists. Barbora Bačová currently lives and works in Košice.

#42 Food

Food is a basic physical need of every living creature. In the context of human society, issues around food and food security are seen as a continuous, necessary process associated with the production, distribution, presentation, consumption and disposal of goods and services. In this constellation, what role does photography play in recording and presenting representations of food and other associated themes related to food issues that address societal customs, traditions, and issues that cut across human and natural history? Food photography is almost never about the food itself. It relates to hierarchies, the division of roles in providing, preparing, serving, and making available one’s own consumption, both in domestic and public settings. It observes culture, structure, quality and targeting in relation to health and the environment. It looks at the professions associated with the phenomenon of food, highlighting open trade, the commerciality of sales, promotion; the importance, function and problematic nature of packaging and waste management. It is interested in the practices and quality of food management. We are witnessing the constant development of the cult of food and food excess. This is a massive expansion of food production, hand in hand with marketing strategies that contribute to a sufficiently authentic experience and convey the product as a unique experience enveloped in a range of positive emotions. The crunch of a crisp, the sound of opening a can of cold drink, the moment of smelling a cup of fresh coffee, the expansion of the taste buds after tasting a piece of chewing gum and the ever glistening, melting rich layer of cheese on a slice of ham pizza are the essential spices of these strategies based on working with the subconscious and reflexes. This is not the end of the spectrum of food-related issues, for on the other side of it is inevitably the starvation of millions of people that cannot be disregarded, the inability to provide affordable sustainable diets along with the biodiversity of ecosystems. What are the environmental challenges currently associated with food production and what will the diet of the future look like?