Fotograf Zone – Is It Just a Myth?

Even if the consensual border of how we separate truthfulness from fiction ever existed, in today’s media world, it has become so ambiguous there is no longer any point in even asking about it. Instead, we should assess what fictional narration brings us – as the well-known meme reminds us, just because something is fake, that doesn’t mean we don’t feel it.

Curator Barbora Čápová’s online exhibition Is It Just a Myth? draws attention to the power of the contemporary digital image and its capacity to mediate suggestive and imaginative experiences of nature, overcoming our alienation from nature through repeated enchantment. While the format of this online exhibition offers an experience of playful elements accompanied by scrolling, its character nevertheless adopts the logic of documentary platforms of contemporary art. The documentation itself provides an autonomous character and introduces an alternative form of the realization of a physical exhibition. These digitally manipulated images, which we can experience in online space, frame our gaze; the gaze we are to use to look at the scenery, thus serving as a constant reminder that our relationship to nature is mediated. Nela Britaňáková’s poetic performance in the form of a mysterious, coiling plant-being that seems to have hatched from one of Katarína Hládeková’s cocoons, along with Štěpán Brož’s fantastical pictures and Jiří Kovanda’s cobweb threads, set in motion the strange mythical narrative of a living forest devoid of humans. The technical-minded interventions by the Duna group and Dominik Adamec, on the other hand, disrupt the dreamy atmosphere, defining themselves against it in both a territorial and commemorative fashion, thus emphasizing the tension arising from the constant interpenetration of nature and technology.

The exhibition, whether in its digital format or its determination to include various means of narration, draws attention to the capacity of images to represent the breaking point between virtuality and reality, fiction and truth, and their capacity to transform from one to the other and thus incite the adoption of alternative positions vis-à-vis the seen. How can we be certain that the forest and the artworks truly exist? Have we not simply fallen into the trap of the curatorial myth?

Image captions

1 | Jiří Kovanda, ›Is It Just a Myth?‹, www.isitjustamyth.com, Photo Jan Hromádko, 2021

2 | Lenka Bakeš, ›Is It Just a Myth?‹, www.isitjustamyth.com, Photo Jan Hromádko, 2021

3 | Nela Britaňáková, ›Is It Just a Myth?‹, www.isitjustamyth.com, Photo Jan Hromádko, 2021

Tina Poliačková

is an independent critic and curator of contemporary art. She currently works as part of the curatorial team of the Šachta Holešovice gallery. She is a doctoral student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she engages the topic of “romantism in contemporary art”.

#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?