Fotograf Zone – Karina Golisová

In this series, I am documenting my family for the first time. I'm trying to name my relationship with them and with myself. I kept a diary during the making of the series where I recorded situations from the photo shoots. The description of these situations helped me to grasp the state of our relationships. My mother appears in the pictures, with whom the photo shoots were as demanding as our relationship. I created self-portraits with my sisters who I hadn't taken a picture with in years. I also took portraits of my nephew and niece who are very important to me because I consider my relationship with them to be the purest and unencumbered by family trauma. And last but not least, my archival photographs of the garden where my grandmother decided to leave this world forever years ago. Plants are an important moment, as it is the subject of gardening that is still my primary means of communication with my mother.

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.

#46 Tourism

It is interesting how much the world of photography is connected with tourism, in other words, how much the two domains may have in common. If we look at them through the lens of a mass phenomenon, they may even be similarly old. And it is in this perspective that a number of controversial questions arise in all their clarity. To what extent has tourism affected many of the coastlines and unique destinations that attract tourists? And to what extent does photography influence our perception of the places we visit?