Like everybody else, I have to be somewhere too

"The good for me is the place that is not any particular place. Like everyone else, I have to be somewhere. And if I have to be somewhere, no matter what, I prefer to be in a place that is a place in as small a measure as possible, a place that is non-specific in as large a measure as possible. This might lead one to believe that all the time I prefer to be in places I have not been before…”

– John Fosse, Essays.

This series is based on photographs I took during my first months after moving to Prague. Since my work so far has been primarily dedicated to documenting the one community I was part of, I wondered where my work would go after moving to another city. I am documenting my life, in a place I cannot name, which has a huge impact on me and covers me with many feelings.

Leaving my previous city leaves me to focus on the smaller cracks in each day. My experience is overexposed and intense. I may have been this way before but it is only now that I am entering a space where my being is not overwhelmed by people, familiars, circumstances or streets I know intimately.

The main theme of this series is a text by John Fosse: "A place that is no particular place" because it is the embodiment of the absurdity of a place that I am constantly thinking about and constantly trying to name. I encourage the viewer to interact and force them to find my thoughts, which even in real life become more enclosed and inaccessible to my surroundings. I try to deal with the new space through a more subjective level, where I draw attention more to myself and where it naturally happens that people leave my photographs and replace them with empty spaces. So this zine is about me, the person I live with, the food I eat, the places I don't know. Even though photography has always mainly provided me with a frozen memory that unfolds into a complete story, these photographs remind me of nothing, and at the same time remind me of a time when I'm just looking and observing.

Karina Golisová was nominated to Futures Talents by Fotograf Zone in 2024.

Co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, FUTURES is a platform to increase the capacity, mobility and visibility of it's selected artists and to bridge the gap between emerging and established artists.

IMAGES CAPTIONS

All images: Karina Golisová, Like everyone else, I have to be somewhere too, 2022

Karina Golisová

works mainly with documentary photography. A significant aspect of her work is the concept of the chosen family, which she sees as a viable alternative to the traditional family model. Through her work, she explores how friendships and communities can serve as a powerful means of resilience in the current era of polycrises. A key element of her practice is photographic zines, which she perceives not only as artistic objects but also as an inclusive medium capable of reaching a wider audience beyond traditional galleries. Through zines, she works with the dramaturgy of images and the reinterpretation of existing material, creating new layers of meaning and closing various life chapters. She is active in the Slovak and Czech underground music scene, where she has been documenting events for years and also co-creating its visual identity. She is the author of many self-published photographic zines such as Utopia, Published, and Underground. Creating zines gives her the opportunity to reinterpret existing material and create a new full-fledged work with its own meaning. She received her bachelor's degree from the Department of Photography and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She also spent a semester in Finland at the Department of Documentary Photography in Lahti. She later completed her master's degree at FAMU in Prague and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava.