m e m e n t o

me and my shadow

2011-11-09T16:04:00.002+01:00

marks on the sky

2011-11-09T15:59:00.003+01:00

Karadicova Bratislava 2011

Paris

2010-06-08T13:26:00.003+02:00

Carry Me To a Better Place

2007-09-24T09:09:00.000+02:00

It's difficult. It's very tough.
I said to the man who'd been sleeping rough
To sit within a fragrant breeze
All among the nodding trees
That hang heavy with the stuff

He threw his arms around my neck
He brushed the tear from my cheek
And held my soft white hand
He was an understanding man
He did not even barely hardly speak

Easy money
Rain it down on the wife and the kids
Rain it down on the house where we live
Rain until you got nothing left to give
And rain that ever-loving stuff down on me

All the things for which my heart yearns
Gives joy in diminishing returns
He kissed me on the mouth
His hands they headed south
And my cheek it burned

Money, man, it is a bitch
The poor, they spoil it for the rich
With my face pressed in the clover
I wondered when this would be over
And at home we are all so guilty-sad

Easy money
Pour it down the open drain
Pour it all through my veins
Pour it down, yeah, let it rain
And pour that ever-loving stuff down on me

Now, I'm sitting pretty down on the bank
Life shuffles past at a low interest rate
In the money-coloured meadows
And all the interesting shadows
They leap up, then dissipate

Easy money
Easy money
Easy money
Rain it down on the wife and the kids
Rain it down on the house where we live
Rain it down until you got nothing left to give
And rain that ever-loving stuff down on me

"Easy Money" Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

untitled #1

2007-09-18T10:25:00.000+02:00

A Week of Buildings 3 4 and 5

2007-09-07T15:08:00.000+02:00

Kolarovo Namestie Bratislava 2006

Burned Building Šamorin 2007

Orange Bratislava 2006

A Week of Buildings ( Day 3 )

2007-09-04T11:41:00.000+02:00

Jelačičova Bratislava 2007

A Week of Buildings (day 2)

2007-09-03T21:58:00.000+02:00

Palkovičova Bratislava 2005

A Week of Buildings ( Day 1)

2007-09-02T12:51:00.000+02:00

Staré Pres Centrum Bratislava 2007

Morning Yearning

2007-09-01T16:17:00.000+02:00

Kameňe Namestie Bratislava 2005

I have realized that to finish the collection of pictures for my book I need to start getting up at sunrise again. Walking the streets in the half dark before dawn, gives me the chance to get a lot done before noon.

At this time of year when the light comes it is strong and clean. It cuts through the narrow city streets and paints rich black shadows on every surface. The remnants of the night before hanging around before the new day progresses it away.

School

2007-08-31T09:12:00.000+02:00

Palkovičova Bratislava 2007

I have only once in the twenty four years since I left, been back to my old school. The occasion was to see a school play and I was struck by how small everything was: desks, chairs, classrooms and teachers. All shrunk by the magic combination of time and adulthood.

This school yard is in the neighborhood I lived in for the first couple of years after I arrived here. It is a primary school and I used to hear the kids playing during morning break. Screaming and running around chasing each other. The sound echoing off the walls of the surrounding apartments . Weekends and evenings the area would be quiet, the school deserted except for the painted footprints dancing on the broken concrete playground.

Reconstruction Race (4 Views)

2007-08-30T23:42:00.001+02:00

clyde & bonnie

2007-08-29T00:36:00.000+02:00

Palkovičova Bratislava 2007

Friendship

2007-08-27T23:43:00.000+02:00

Train tracks Chemicka Bratislava 2007

Friendship like train tracks running straight and parallel heading for the horizon. The view becomes obscured and the reality is altered. The tracks once inseperable, part and change course for different destinations. We have our alloted time with one another, a time of learning and growing. A journey.

Friendship is neither about asking nor is it about replying. It is merely an understanding. When we stop understanding we become like the train tracks: still solid and straight yet inevitably headed for different destinations.

Friendship is a lot harder to make than it is to break. It resembles an out bound journey filled with unknown promise but often unfortunately with no return ticket.

House of Culture

2007-08-27T13:13:00.000+02:00

Dom Kultura Bratislava 2005

A Life Less Ordinary - Anton Podstrásky

2007-08-24T12:03:00.000+02:00

Photo by Miro Miklas

On Monday 21st August at 16.37 I received an s.m.s. from my friend. ‘Tonko is dead” Everything stopped for a few seconds. My memory took over.

“Tonko”, Anton Podstrásky was arguably the best Slovak street photographer of his generation. A man who lived in the moment, a working class connoisseur of the human spirit. He focused his lens on the ordinary, the downtrodden and the ignored. His studio was the city streets, the market at Miletičova and various krčmas (cheap bars)in Bratislava. His subjects were societies rich tapestry of manual workers, alcoholics and misfits. His perfectly preserved photographic archive remains as both his gift and memento.

For a street photographer to be in the right place at the right time requires luck. It takes a great deal of sacrifice, self belief and patience to walk the streets daily, literally waiting for that briefest moment when something special jumps out from the seamless flow of ordinary life, like seeing a fish leap from beneath the surface of a fast moving river. Tonko’s photographs are a testament to that: A life less ordinary.
Chain smoking, hard drinking Tonko was never simply a voyeur, his life on the other side of the lens was with the very people who fill the frame of his photographs. The struggle to survive combined with the pressure to create. At times Tonko shone. There was a party and he was the host. At that time maybe with the influence of an appreciative critical force on him he might had become a household name.

In the last years of his life even though Tonko suffered great physical pain he managed weekly trips to Mileticova market to raise a glass among the remaining friends, memories and ghosts of his life. It was there more than a year ago that my friend seeking out Tonko hopefully as the subject for his Bachelor of arts thesis on photography found him. Tonko invited us to his home to look through his archive and instantly we realized what an amazing treasure we had found in both the man and his work. Reacting instinctively and with utmost empathy we selected and printed images from his archive and made an exhibition for him in the city. His first exhibition in a decade. Public response was overwhelmingly positive not only from Slovaks but also from world wide visitors.
Tonko sat at his opening surrounded by his photographs with a smile on his face and a tear in his eye. The subsequent weeks brought more pain and suffering, Tono was rushed to hospital where one of his legs had to be amputated. Infections and more operations followed. He was sent home and cared for by his friends. With his intelligence, strong will and humour intact, he was still pushed in a wheelchair to his spiritual home: Mileticove market. The last time I saw Tonko he was sitting under the shade of an old tree at the end of my street. Newspapers tucked between his thigh and the side of his wheelchair, a cigarette in one hand and the remains of a half litre plastic bottle of white wine in the other. On recognition of us his tired face lit up with the briefest flash of genuine love. He shared a joke with us, we smoked a cigarette and said goodbye.

Thank you Tonko for your gift to us: That to truly live the Life Less Ordinary you must never give up.

Lavagance

2007-08-23T10:53:00.000+02:00

A few years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the music of Lavagance. Instantly I felt something, it was loose, sexy rock and roll with equal amounts of attitude, talent and raw energy. Unfortunately I wasn't able to photograph them for my "Memento" project (young artists and musicians originally for id magazine) three years ago but after various brief encounters over coffee or beer I was invited to visit their studio to begin documenting the recording process of their new album. Its a great privilege to be around music in its making and to spend time with genuine ego free musicians who's verve for life is translated into the music that will inevitably define them.

A Head Full of Half Formed Ideas

2007-07-30T10:21:00.000+02:00

My head is crowded with half formed ideas. Can I control my destiny or is it set. Am I a passenger even when I think I am not? I live now, but is now a fading moment?

Streets carpeted with leaves soften my footfalls. They make me feel weightless. This is a moment like many that will ignite a memory that is so deep I cannot recall it for more than a few seconds before it’s gone. Lost memories. A song on the radio or a word in a newspaper will vividly bring back a face from a past I had forgotten. Like static between stations there is a voice and a name but to faint to make out.

Love or the feeling of falling in love softens the sharp edges of life. Love is a separate entity, a third person in the relationship of two. You fall in love with her, she falls in love with you and you both fall in love with love. Its instant. Some people never love like this; they calculate everything down to the smallest detail and weigh up the value, the profit and loss. Love is a collision you can only have at full speed with your eyes closed and without your safety belt fastened. It’s a leap of faith. It is also filled with equal amounts of beauty and foolishness.

It puts ink in the poet’s pen but not food on his table. It can last a lifetime or just a heartbeat. It can’t be measured and only its effect can be seen.

Hot Hot Heat

2007-07-19T21:53:00.000+02:00

Today was 39 degrees impossible to do anything other than constantly replace lost fluids.
Even now I'm coated with perspiration and its an effort to type.

Like a river carrying a seed on its current to the ocean

2007-07-16T17:18:00.000+02:00

Photographs themselves are literally empty of meaning; only the viewer can instill concrete meaning to these two-dimensional representations of a reality that only existed for a mere 250th of a second. A frozen piece of time devoid of real life, an imprint of science like a fossil. As the photograph and our perceptions converge on the same space we realize that we can never again live in these moments, alas they are gone into the ether of our memory. But the photograph can provoke from us the answer to one important question: Did we truly live in the moment anyway?

Understanding the Reality

2007-07-15T11:23:00.001+02:00

“Statecraft is often about working to transform current realities so what is not possible today becomes possible over time. Before you can change an unacceptable reality you have to understand it in the first place”. Dennis Ross The Wall St Journal.

Between the cities of Poprad, Levoca and Spiska Nova Ves sits the tiny village of Letanovce. With magnificent rolling hills and dense forests as far as the eye can see it is
a place of unspoilt beauty only an hour away from the breathtaking tourist paradise of the High Tatra mountains.
Scattered here on the side of a hill at the edge of a forest is another scene that captures the eye, though neither for beauty nor tourist potential. It is the makeshift slum that is home to around 500 Roma. But here in Letanovce as with most rural areas underdevelopment and unemployment statistically sit side by side. The Roma of Letanovce are viewed locally as a problem and a nuisance. Stories of widespread stealing and lawlessness are commonplace. Yet these men women and children live out their existence in the rapidly prospering EU country without electricity running water and sanitation. And what of the many children who by the time they are able to will probably become parents themselves? The coming generation of under 11’s are a massive focus group for what is to be fully understood before it can be transformed.

A common story and another statistic to add to the already overgrown pile of problems being faced by the government their new Roma representative and the many NGO’s trying to unravel and solve the many layers of this problem. What we have done we have done but what we do now will shape the future for these people and this country. It is a domestic issue that has gained an important place on the international stage. How Slovakia handles this will be viewed critically throughout the international community.
The slum in Letanovce is due to be bulldozed, more than half of the inhabitants are to be moved to new housing in a town where their new potential neighbours have already expressed disappointment. Words like ghetto, closed society and segregation have become catch words in the media.

One answer obviously lies in education, both in schools and in training for skilled work.
Eventually to have schools staffed with Roma teachers who could focus on solid practical skills and social education would be a giant forward step. The possibility of successful future integration into high schools and universities or sports scholarships could provide valuable motivation. Sports programs have proved a success in underprivileged communities throughout the world and in themselves help to promote and sustain a healthier lifestyle. A lot of raw talent from a poor environment has passed through wise nurturing hands and gone on to greatness. Communities are as strongly affected by success as they are by failure and fairness and understanding today have as much to do with right and wrong as they always have. Emotions can cloud the ability to effectively judge a reality. Injustice is common fact of life worldwide and is judged so.
Tackling the problem also lies in the hands of the individual, the parent, the teacher and the employer. Looking and listening without prejudice is a quality that has to be taught at home and in school to children. It is also a basic need that should be required and reinforced in the workplace.

Its not just a case of pouring money in to a situation until the situation miraculously fixes itself. This does not work. We have to recognise that the problem is also a problem in ourselves and in our attitude and focus on what we want compared with what we need. If we do not want a problem then we should seek a way to properly understand why we have a problem. If it is not a medical problem where at best we can only treat the symptoms then we have to change thinking and more critically pre existing patterns of what we the individual deem right and wrong. These and many similar situations feed off our ignorance and selfishness and thus can affect our belief of right and wrong.
Ultimately there is no one perfect solution to this problem but it is easy to see how elsewhere in the world situations like this have been manipulated, a divide grows, negativity spreads and a malign feeling transforms itself into something much worse.

.

Fragments of a Broken Dream

2007-06-08T10:43:00.001+02:00

This will be the title of the book I am making from the last three years of work.

Football

2007-06-01T12:04:00.001+02:00

The boys were filled with more pent up energy than usual. A quiet before the storm and the sky too the colour of wet concrete peppered with bruises like a post fight boxer. The ominous promise of a storm.

The reason for a little more tension than usual: the inter school football finals to be held in Dubravka. The weeks leading up to this day were filed with intense Friday football sessions in the school gym. Two and a half hours of running, sweating, falling and fighting for goals interspersed with many cheers of victory and tears of failure.

Picoman was filled with his usual repertoire of mischievous comments and posturing the central focus of the six boys. Marek laughed but with suppressed aggression rippling across his face, Tomas a gifted footballer exuded a quiet confidence. Miso his customary baseball cap pulled down low flashed a smile or two, Karol the youngest and smallest excited and a little cocky, he also has a natural gift with the ball but has yet learned to pass it. Riso, quiet and sleepy had his usual otherworldly look in his eyes.

The bus ride was relatively sedate the boys content to be out of school looking out the window, telling jokes and watching the girls on the bus going to work. Jakub filled me in on some of the situations that might be possible based on previous competitions. Rivalry, bad words, fights and a visit by the police to take away a couple of boys wanted for some petty crime. Anticipation raised my adrenalin level a little higher than normal.

We walked into the school with that familiar smell of feet and dust and made our way to the gym. Passing a handful of scowling boys dressed in red and black striped football shirts. Teachers and boys met and shared greetings albeit the former more cordially than the later. While the boys changed into their football strips Jakub introduced me to the other teachers and over a cup of coffee I sat quietly as they exchanged thoughts on the proceedings. In to the gym to meet all the boys from the five schools lined up to hear the expectations of fair play and good behaviour. An intense mix of adolescent energy, boyish awkwardness and tension. A few furtive glances shot my way only to be expected at the presence of a stranger with camera.

The first match got started and it became quickly obvious it was going to be a one horse race. The home side Dubravka with as much skill to match their pace and aggression scoring a couple of quick goals. Their players more solid and confident especially one boy sporting a shaved Mohawk haircut who dominated the play, controlling and feeding the ball to the main goal scorer an athletic dark haired boy with an intimidating presence and a rocket of a shot. The next match saw the boys from Karpatska and with them the hope to see them do well and play as a team. They had the speed and skill to outplay their opponents and flashes of brilliance from Tomas and pace from Picoman produced a couple of goals but they lacked the right attitude and became quickly disheartened with frustration giving away easy goals. Victory was not to be theirs.

Their second match started well but the same frustration and lack of spirit returned. A challenge on Picoman produced a few seconds of writhing agony worthy of an Oscar. The rest of their games played out the same way. Karol shone briefly in Pico’s absence but had neither strength nor luck to put together a winning goal. Tomas played with guts and determination throughout but was unfortunately alone. Marek playing with wild aggression could only power the ball off the back wall and give away frustrating penalty goals. Riso in goal bravely did his best under constant attack, saving as many and in reality keeping the defeats respectable.

The one horse race finished with the home side eating up everyone in their path, only Ruzinov presenting any kind of difficulty. So for the presentation of the trophy, the boys changed into their regular clothes: A mix of hip-hop influenced hooded tops and baseball caps. The older boys back into their tough guy pose the younger boys looking childlike by comparison. We rolled out of school and on towards the bus stop to make our way back to Karpatska school. As we rounded the corner the sight of a waiting bus made the three older boys race for its doors. Leading the charge was Picoman seemingly unaffected by his agonizing injury.

Infinity

2007-05-29T07:02:00.000+02:00

In Your Honor

2007-05-28T15:22:00.000+02:00

Can you hear me
Hear me screamin'
Breaking in the muted skies
This thunder heart
Like bombs beating
Echoing a thousand miles

Mine is yours and yours is mine
There is no divide
In your honor
I would die tonight

Mine is yours and yours is mine
I will sacrifice
In your honor
I would die tonight
For you to feel alive

Can you feel me
Feel me breathing
One last breathe before I close my eyes
This suffering
For receiving
Deliver me into the other side

For you to feel alive
For you to feel alive
For you to feel alive

Foo Fighters In Your Honor

Dano

2007-05-26T08:31:00.000+02:00

Dano is in his fifties though he looks younger. When he was a boy he loved horses and was a talented rider. But in a moment he was kicked in the head by a horse. The accident almost killed him and subsequently left him permanently "dull" to the world around him.

I see him often in the city though he comes from Dobra Voda. He lives with his sister and her husband in Bratislava.
He can be found most days walking in my neighborhood. Just wandering aimlessly. Sometimes stopping and staring off into the distance. One minute looking like a lost boy the next laughing to himself like he's just heard the funniest joke.

He always politely asks me if I have a cigarette or 20 crowns. His speech for me is difficult to understand but I have realized he is always telling me some joke or funny story and when he gets to the end, he laughs.

I laugh as well, not because I understand the joke but because Dano's effort and presence make me happy and reaffirm something to me.

In a moment it could all be different.

XA2 and Humor

2007-05-22T10:31:00.000+02:00

I started using my old Olympus XA2 again.
Small and compact with a good lens especially if there is a lot of light.
Nice for the street because it can appear like a mobile phone so people don't really notice you taking their picture.

Everyday life is filled with little subtleties, as things change here the contrasts become more apparent and I enjoy seeing and capturing these changes and the humor they sometimes provide.

The Fly

2007-05-21T23:12:00.000+02:00

Its hot and sticky. The average temperature is around 30 degrees.
On the ground floor the strong smell of waste and decay attracts flies.
Eventually I find them on the fifth floor. Stuck to the window, motionless.

First week at school

2007-05-14T11:29:00.000+02:00

A couple of images from a new project I am working on:

A Portrait of Jakub.

More Emotional than Physical

2007-04-28T23:49:00.000+02:00

I find myself drawn to illustrate the emotional side of situations using photography. Reportage for me is a constant process of refining and editing and simplification. Telling a story has so many variables depending on your standpoint on the issues and themes. Allowing oneself the luxury to dream a little with the everyday, to walk and wait and feel. Then one gets a little closer to harmony.

Flowers

2007-04-27T00:52:00.000+02:00

Family

2007-04-26T19:37:00.000+02:00

Dogs at Easter

2007-04-23T10:25:00.000+02:00

Dobra Voda Easter 2007

Bratislava Easter 2007

Andrej

2007-04-19T08:37:00.000+02:00

Andrej talks in complex riddles, his subjects range from vitamin and mineral compounds to oral sex. He stares at you unblinking with intense dark brown eyes. The kind of eyes you instantly associate with trauma.
Andrej has an easy warm smile and a quick memory for each new English word I tell him.
He invites us to his home to see his paintings and listen to his music.

The walls and ceiling of his room are covered with painted symbols, Mayan, Egyptian and Chinese amongst them. As his computer starts up he tells us in his own unique way about the paintings and what some of them mean to him. The musical selection is of the ethnic trance variety in a few different themes. We settle on an Arabian style and Andrej Accompanies the weaving melody with his own interpretation on a plactic recorder.

Maybe fifteen years ago Andrej was just another young guy with a few problems. He was diagnosed with depression and I guess prescribed various pharmaceuticals. The place he went to during this period of his life, It seems he never came back from.
Even with his relentless stream of words, elemental abreviations, repeating questions and sexual innuendo there is such innocence about him. I am happy to have met him.

From Above

2007-04-17T08:42:00.000+02:00

Remember what you have seen,
because everything forgotten
returns to the circling winds

Navajo wind chant

Four from Neighborhoods

2007-04-16T13:21:00.000+02:00

"Rear Window" Bratislava 2006

"Rain" Bratislava 2006

"Winter" Bratislava 2004

"Storm" Bratislava 2004

Easter in Dobrá Voda Part 1

2007-04-11T21:04:00.000+02:00

Easter has a combination of rituals in a Slovak village. From the male population of the village chasing the female population with whips made from plaited willow or dowsing them in cold water and being paid for it in return to eating smoked ham with horseradish and drinking copious amounts of very strong homemade plum brandy.

We arrived to take photographs; part of my ongoing reportage about the contrasts between city and village life. I hadn’t been to the village in two years so I was anticipating seeing people I'd met before and being able to converse with them freely as I could hardly say ten words of Slovak two years ago.

The first person I recognised was Ervin in his early seventies looking a lot like Charles Bukowski with a constitution to match the late novelist. Ervin introduced me to all his friends as “Ingleesh” and then turned to me on each occasion and said
“ All ist gut?” Ervin in a pale grey suit with blue shirt would hours later re appear wearing a black t shirt with a silver skull motif in another bar where I would find myself a few drinks down the line playing old sixties classics on a twangy guitar to a bar full of singing locals.

They accepted me in the village with open arms, bottles and kitchens.

Love on a side street

2007-04-07T18:09:00.000+02:00

As the River project has been temporarily put on hold (till I locate a replacement medium format camera) I'm back walking the dusty city streets. Soaking it all up. Still adding to my at times sprawling Neighborhoods project. Symbols, portraits, emotions, stories. Finding the strongest images when I'm not looking just feeling my way through the day. I found love on a side street under a dirty balcony. Another thing that I wasn't looking for.

Life as a memory

2007-03-29T14:00:00.000+02:00

Memories are soaked into every surface. It's like you can feel them when you touch the table in a bar or brush your fingers along the metal railings of a park. Life in all its glory one day becomes just another memory. We try to preserve the good things in our lives but they are destined to fly. The more they try to fly the more we try to preserve them.

Pavol

2007-03-20T11:49:00.000+01:00

We sat in his kitchen sipping freshly brewed camomile tea and listening to African folk music. In the cramped space as the light filtered in through a small kitchen window Pavol spoke briefly of his past. His father was from Ghana his mum Slovak. He told of the seven years he spent as a dancer aboard luxury cruisers from Vienna to Budapest.

Leaving Vienna in the early evening, wealthy tourists all aboard Pavol and his partner would put on an exhibition of dance styles ranging from tango to jazz for the guests. Soft spoken with a warmth in his eyes he showed me souvenir cards from those times, photographs of a younger more athletic Pavol well dressed in a choreographed pose.

Maybe it was his minimally voiced fondness for those times or just that genuine reflexive ache for ones youth gone, but inspite of lively music and warm tea a feeling of melancholy filled the room.

Dodo

2007-03-19T19:19:00.000+01:00

Seventy years old living on a houseboat on the Danube. He worked at the petrochemical company Slovnaft for forty years. He has built four boats and sailed the river up through Austria and Germany and on to Rotterdam and The North Sea and down through Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania to Croatia.

Years ago a German yacht sailed into his little stretch of the rivers inlet and asked permissiion to moor up next to his houseboat. They got talking and asked what he was cooking. Just a simple lunch he offered and when they asked if they could join him the seed was planted for his waterfront restaurant. At one time a private restaurant but as demand became stronger it became open to the public in season from March to October.

Dodo the subject of a few TV documentary's is an authority on the Danube and its history as we spoke he showed me fantastic old photographic books, a light always on in his eyes.

The inlet is now home to a few more restaurants and a boating club that he is the President of. Off season the restaurant is closed and converted into the houseboat that he lives on with his third wife and a giant black Newfoundland called Andi. His wood burning stove fueled by dried out driftwood that has been battered by storms and carried along the river.

Tomb

2007-03-19T14:59:00.000+01:00

We drove across an expanse of muddy fields the light fading, my friend telling me of this place he was stationed at when he did his national service, as a border guard.

We arrived at the place; a small part of the river under a bridge surrounded by trees. Quiet unassuming and seemingly peaceful but with a dark undercurrent the feeling you get when the song your listening to in a major key subltly effortlessly drifts into a minor melancholic place.

The lookout post a concrete box complete with an aperture for pointing a gun out of sits under the bridge like a tomb.

Anton Podstrásky update

2007-03-15T08:45:00.000+01:00

Many years of hard living, hard drinking & heavy smoking have their effect. Last year Anton collapsed and after being rushed to hospital it was found that he had to have his leg amputated. The arteries had given up and the pain he winced through for years was finally so intense that it made him pass out and fall down in the street.

Over the months since the operation he has reabilitated slowly. Making it to the his old haunt the market on saturdays for a glass of wine with old friends. Still drinking and smoking (You can't tell a 67 year old man who has been doing so all his life to quit now)
I got a call yesterday "Tono is in hospital, His stump has gone black" The doctors will remove the blackened infected remnant of what was Tono's right leg.

We will wait and we will see.

Contrasts in Sofia part one

2007-03-14T09:22:00.000+01:00

Sofia like other post communist capital cities is a place of contrasts. The centre a mix of narrow streets, old buildings and stray dogs blending uneasily with high fashion outlets, cosmopolitan bars, restaurants and construction sites. It is knitted together by a ceaseless seam of cars and people. Off the wide main downtown boulevards the narrow side streets are a cultural patchwork of crumbling buildings, ankle high convenience stores, Turkish, Lebanese, Chinese, Japanese and Mediterranean restaurants, junkshops, fruit and vegetable markets, second hand emporiums, tea houses, coffee shops and Jewish bakeries.

On my way to a large outdoor market down a narrow dusty street that was home to both a synagogue and a Caterpillar earthmover I encountered a traditional barbers shop. The shops only occupant a dark haired man sitting quietly smoking and playing backgammon. The TV a soundless flickering ghost of an old movie for company. I asked first in Slovak then in English if I could photograph his shop. He replied without hesitation “Of course” After carefully considering and moving a piece on his board he added “You from London?” Our brief conversation amounted to him telling me he had lived in Sofia for ten years, was married and had a family.

“Business”? I looked around the shops corkboard walls, makeshift counter with two office chairs facing two picture frame mirrors, various religious icons, family snap shots, unlabelled bottles of lotions and potions, brushes, combs, a hairdryer and clippers hanging form the wall on a hook all bathed in a dusty unforgiving florescent wash of light. “Slow” He replied.

Contrasts I kept telling myself as the December chill bit my face and tears rolled down my cheeks. A few streets away I had been drinking hot tea made from fresh mint and cedar kernels after a steaming bowl of chicken couscous in a beautiful new Moroccan restaurant. Contrasts.

Gone Too

2007-03-12T10:19:00.000+01:00

He was sitting there drinking his beer alone. Whenever I saw him he had a smile. Always just the other side of sober, red faced but with optimism. It was difficult making photographs in the bar. Especially being a stranger and a foreigner. Cameras were considered unnecessary and unpopular.

This picture was taken on the last day of 2005. The bar was about to close for modernisation. All the socialist memorabilia to be trashed, gone the bust of Lenin and the photograph of Brezhnev from behind the bar. Gone too the red drapery behind the TV set emblazoned with Lenin. That night I heard a story about this man, of how when he was a child his father who was a chauffeur drove all over Europe from here to the Mediterranean and back many times. Whenever possible his father would take him along on an adventure by his side in the passenger seat watching the world go by. A close bond that formed as a child lasted a lifetime: He and his father were constant companions.

His father died of a heart attack towards the end of last year and on the few subsequent occasions I happened to see this man there was a sadness more than grief about him. A lost man in usual surroundings has an other worldliness about him. At the beginning of this year I met my old neighbor for a drink in the reconstructed version of this bar and he told me of how the man in the photograph had been shopping on the local market and after having the usual few drinks slipped on ice, fell and banged his head.The man from the bar with the smile has gone too. He will be missed.

Open Wild

2007-03-07T20:32:00.000+01:00

A lighted match finds us in this space my dear,
Like shaping wax in the flame of fear.
Call his name in your sleep but he’s gone away,
And there’s just you by the light of day.
You hold the image like a toy for a child
Like the hand you held in the open wild.

Open wild, like a late night bar
Whiskey and beer and love from afar
Open wild, as the band played on
Soon it’ll be tomorrow and soon you’ll be gone.

A long lost boat to sail away on my dear,
You gave up the ghost and it’s oh so clear.
Burnt every page in your diary,
I see your fate in a gin soaked expiry.
You hold the image like a toy for a child
Like the hand you held in the open wild.

Open wild, like a late night bar
Whiskey and beer and love from afar
Open wild as the band played on
Soon it’ll be tomorrow and soon you’ll be gone.

A cigarette marks the passing of time,
The seasons fade like the passion from a crime.
You try out a smile that only reminds you of him,
So you drink yourself to the bottom again.
You hold the image like a toy for a child
Like the hand you held in the open wild.

Open wild, like a late night bar
Whiskey and beer and love from afar
Open wild as the band played on
Soon it’ll be tomorrow and soon you’ll be gone.

Anton Podstrasky

2007-02-21T14:45:00.000+01:00

Tono Podstraský sits in the early evening light with his eyes closed lost in reverie. Casting his mind back some forty years to recall names, places and dates most of them long gone for his up coming exhibition. A negative from what remains of his perfectly preserved archive held carefully between his nicotine stained index finger and thumb. “Wait, wait ’67 a restaurant called Hron that’s it”. He smiles, gently puts down the negative and takes a long drag of his cigarette.

Born on 1st of April 1939 he was brought up in Pružina along with his ten brothers and sisters, his mother worked hard on the land and his father was a door-to-door salesman. Originally wanting to become a painter he moved to Bratislava to study art at high school and under the guidance of his adopted older brother Milan Sládek he became a photographer, making portraits of famous people for his final exam. During his career he has worked as a stills photographer on many films, published thousands of photographs in the newspapers, made two books of film stills and his photographs have illustrated three books on gypsies. He’s also had half a dozen solo exhibitions the first in 1969 organized by the chief editor of the newspaper Smena.

My first introduction to Anton Podsraský was at the beginning of this year when a friend called me up to watch a video of the photographer, made in 1994 by Slovak T.V. The video a shot from the hip style documentary follows Podstraský on foot from his flat through the streets of Bratislava to the market at Miletičova. Podstraský darting about erratically with his bad leg sticking out straight as a ski pole pulling him along, clicking his shutter at unsuspecting passers by. Occasionally pausing to speak to people, not really to ask them for permission but to compose them for a better shot. His face a multitude of expressions as he waves his hands and literally barters with people on the market for a picture. Watching this combination of energy, tenacity, courage and decision all rolled up into some kind of crazy dance was hypnotic.
But the real power of Podstrasky is in his images. Here in black and white old men play like children pulling faces for the camera while others stand gracefully, eyes filled with pride. Podstraský focuses his camera on the forgotten and the ignored, on the poor, homeless and alcoholic. He doesn’t render them as hopeless, lost or downtrodden but shows us a celebration of life without riches or fortune and in doing so he finds both poetry and comedy with his camera.
Today though the years have taken their toll Anton is warm, entertaining, witty and generous with his compliments.

“I started taking street in ‘65” he says. “Before that I was working on films”
His street photos tell you a story of the time, from the 1967 picture of a man selling ice cream from a bicycle in front of the castle to a working horse pulling a plough in front of panel flats. But the pub was his studio and its there that he captured people more intimately.
Getting closer and taking greater risks to get the picture. He was attacked and beaten many times suffering broken fingers, a broken nose and having his teeth knocked out. “ I had about 24 cameras smashed or stolen but when I was on the ground getting kicked I usually managed to save my film” He laughs.

Anton Podstraský s photographs capture the heart and soul of the street, the shared human experience. They are photographs by a man who was in the right place at the right time.

Ponorka 1966 Anton Podstrasky

Ice-Cream 1967 Anton Podstrasky

Purple Fields

2007-02-19T15:49:00.000+01:00

The light is falling
The colour is fading
Time is scratching away
We are here just a moment
But gone so very long.

Abandoned Gas Station

2007-02-18T21:59:00.000+01:00

Still thinking about connections.

Journal

2007-02-16T17:33:00.000+01:00

There is a theme tying everything together a connection no matter how small.
She holds a framed family portrait her eyes are closed she is enraptured
In the portrait she has two small boys in her arms. She is younger, she is happy.
The boys live in Canada and they have for the last thirty years.
The years she hasn't seen them.

Liquid Tear

2007-02-15T09:42:00.000+01:00

It flows, like a sweet liquid tear across the landscape. Constantly changing yet still remaining in essence the same. The river.
In the deepest winter, parts of the river are frozen solid like glass that children skate on, men over decades and plum brandy recall such times with fondness. People come and people go but the river remains long after the party’s over. The action of the river is simple it is eating away the land slowly, methodically, relentlessly from Germany to Romania.
When I think of the river I think of infinity, of inspiration and of adventure.
Though the river to some in the not so distant past was an obstacle to be traversed to freedom. Many died trying to cross its icy quickness.

Lost Treasure

2007-02-13T12:58:00.000+01:00

Jaroslav Michalik walks with a stick. He has 17 stitches in his hip from a recent operation to fix an old climbing injury. Though his face is a mask of discomfort he manages to mutter something to himself that brings a faint laugh. It’s just before eleven and he is opening the two brass padlocks that secure the big iron barred gate to the door of his bookshop. As we step from the cold frosted street into the gloom a new combination of smells fill my nose. Of old dust and paper and the sickly sweet cure of stale sweat and cigarette smoke on wet clothes. Jaro locates the light switch with timed precision in the near dark and after a couple of sputters the room is washed in fluorescent light. Adjusting to the light you see a thirty square metre room with about eight square metres of space left usable. Everywhere the eye can see books. Books of all description known piled up from floor to ceiling, half in bookshelves the room bisected by a wall of books to create a small corridor, piles of books almost obscuring the windows where the desk and chair at which Jaro spends his working day until six in the evening sit. The desk too is a patchwork of piled books, old playing cards, ashtrays, photographs and scraps of paper with names and numbers scrawled on them.
The used bookshop is known as an antikvariat in Slovakia and of the handful in the city of Bratislava Jaro’s has to be the smallest. Sitting at the foot of a row of panel flats on a quiet side street almost obscured by the cars in the car park a small brown metal door with Antik and Variat stencilled in two lines with white tape are the only visible clues. Inside the bookshop Jaro is small, strong and straight faced sitting at his desk greeting all with a “Good day” and sometimes a calculating look. Somewhat like an ice berg only one third of the books seem visible at any one time and if you know what you are looking for Jaro can usually tell you within a few seconds whether he has it and can bring it to hand in anything between two minutes and half an hour depending on how many walls of books it is necessary to move. From classics to comic’s, old vinyl to chipped plates, autographs to photo albums from the late 1800’s among the necessary ballast there are gems: A first edition Somerset Maugham, hand drawn German maps from the thirties, a rare Russian edition of Bob Dylan's Slow Train A Comin’ and the odd daguerreotype of families in their Sunday best staring out with frozen silvery eyes into the now ghost world of a Budapest photo studio.
“ Interesting things “ Jaro says. And you know by the break in his expression, the crows feet fanning out from his eyes that a few words are his way of conveying a deep interest and connection to these mementos of crumbling history. The bookshop is two years old the space was previously home to an internet café and a communal cellar for the dwellers of the nine floor flat. He built up his collection over a period of years before the realisation of the bookshop, travelling to villages and towns to buy from people’s houses sifting through the rubbish in basements and attics for treasure, thousands of conversations and amateur history lessons later the shop stands as a living tomb, as fragile and somehow temporary as memories themselves.
“ Little people “ Another of his English phrases though not meaning children or dwarfs but few customers, both a sad reminder of the decreasing literacy of a generation addicted to disposable entertainment and the reality of a business quite literally faced with a shelf life. “ People do not buy old books, they give new things as presents “ The majority of buyers tend to be of the older generation with little money to spare. There are artists, philosophers, professors and collectors that routinely visit exchanging books and opinions. One day I was introduced to Julius Koller a famous Slovak artist, slightly built and hawk eyed with wild unkempt silver hair and a beard from the bible, he suggested I make a portrait of him orchestrating a scene where he was outside behind the barred gate of the bookshop as if incarcerated, frustration on his face from as he said “ Not being able to get to my favourite bookshop “. There is Tony in his sixties who travels from a nearby flea market on Fridays pushing an old bicycle laden down with plastic bags full of books his thick tinted glasses reflecting a perfect inverted amber version of the interior. Guidos an ex- gymnast from the 1940s Czechoslovak Olympic team smartly dressed in shirt and tie back from a seminar in Chicago where he was a guest speaker on the development of gymnastic technique. A glass of wine and a piece of his sisters cake along with the usual inquisition albeit in flawless English on why I am here in Slovakia. Guidos as sharp and strong as many a man half his age.
“ If you’ve seen the smallest then you have to see the biggest “ And so one Saturday we took the car a hundred kilometres to Leopoldov the home of Central Europe’s largest old book shop. Though Leopoldov is more famously known for its prison and the town has a reputation for alcohol and crime. It’s a one street town with enough elements to quicken your pulse. And arriving outside the bookshop you see it shares part of a building with a pub full of mean drunks, the smell of beer and urine sharp in the air. Ring a bell and from behind a door a well built bearded man with a sport coat and some type of captains hat appears at the kind of barred gate usually seen in old prison films. Inside in a room the size of half a football pitch are 250 thousand old books lined up in tall shelves that give the appearance of book monuments towering over small patches of threadbare carpet. In fact when viewed from above on the second floor the carpet appears like small brown valleys dwarfed by the steep cliffs made by the books. A solid silent mass of words.
“Coffee” Says the man in the captain’s hat. The man in the hat happens to be called Tibor and as well as being the owner of the bookshop he is also a keen fisherman and an excellent accordion player. As well as 250 thousand books, dozens of typewriters, electrical goods and crockery he also has a collection of around 100 accordions and some very nice homemade apple brandy so let the entertainment begin. Tibor sits behind his desk and holds court with whoever is in front of him listening. He sends out for beer and soon after picks up a beautiful old Italian harmonica and starts to play “We’ll meet again” the Vera Lynne classic apparently for me, he follows this with some folk and gypsy standards all tunes played with great gusto and comedy asides. Tibor is a born entertainer and clearly appreciates being the centre of attention. He shows me his visitor’s book with signatures and comments from the various domestic and foreign dignitaries, politicians, professors and public that have visited his bookshop. Photographs of him with old Russian and Slovak presidents. Tibor always in a sport coat and hat of some description. He too is suffering from loss of business due to “little people” though with his location and size it is more understandable. He has some gems but a lot more ballast and I can’t help thinking that through time the good stuff will be picked off leaving behind a paperback carcass of books that are all but redundant. Still the experience is worth the trip and though a couple of T.V and newspaper articles give Tibor a reason to brush down a sport coat and don a different hat it’s the support of “Little people” meaning people in general, for them to renew an interest in things old and lend some support to these musty old bookshops and maybe find themselves some lost treasure or at the least a piece of plain and simple history.

Six Young Men

2007-02-10T15:29:00.000+01:00

The celuloid of a photograph holds them well,-
Six young men, familiar to their friends.
Four decades that have faded and ochre-tinged
This photograph have not wrinkled the faces or the hands.
Though their cocked hats are not now fashionable,
Their shoes shine. One imparts an intimate smile,
One chews a grass, one lowers his eyes, bashful,
One is ridiculous with cocky pride-
Six months after this picture they were all dead.

All are trimmed for a Sunday jaunt. I know
That bilberried bank, that thick tree, that black wall,
Which are there yet and not changed. From where these sit
You hear the water of seven streams fall
To the roarer in the bottom, and through all
The leafy valley a rumouring of air go.
Pictured here, their expressions listen yet,
And still that valley has not changed its sound
Though their faces are four decades under the ground.

This one was shot in an attack and lay
Calling in the wire, then this one, his best friend,
Went out to bring him in and was shot too;
And this one, the very moment he was warned
From potting at tin cans in no-man's land,
Fell back dead with his rifle sights shot away.
The rest nobody knows what they came to,
But come to the worst they must have done, and held it
Closer than their hope; all were killed.

Here see a man's photograph,
The locket of a smile, turned overnight
Into the hospital of his mangled last
Agony and hours; see bundled in it
His mightier-than-a-man dead bulk and weight:
And on this one place that keeps him alive
(In his Sunday best) See fall war's worst
Thinkable flash and rending, onto his smile
Forty years rotting into soil.

That man's not more alive whom you confront
And shake by the hand, see hale, hear speak loud,
Than any of these six celluloid smiles are,
Nor prehistoric or fabulous beast more dead;
No thought more vivid than their smoking-blood:
To regard this photograph might well dement,
Smile from the single exposure and shoulder out
One's own body from its instant and heat.

Ted Hughes The Hawk in the Rain 1957

Heavy Metal Lifestyle

2007-02-10T11:26:00.000+01:00

Its noon, 35 degrees Celsius in the middle of a field, Jano and his son are working, stuffing the rusted skeletons of two cars with metal wire, cables, steel plates, refrigerator and cooker parts: basically anything made from metal. Their day consists of metal and their survival depends on finding, transporting and selling it. Jano is stripped to the waist talking philosophically, making graceful gestures. Around two metres tall strong in arm and body with deep set eyes. He cracks a surprisingly warm smile as he talks of the how much the city has changed and how never drinking alcohol has kept him clear and strong. His eighteen-year old son stands astride old car tyres folding strips of rusted metal and stuffing them into the burnt out skeleton of an old car. He works without words, complaint or pause appearing to take no notice of me or the intense heat.

Wreckage is strewn over a half-mile radius. Of the many dead and dying autos an old Trabant filled with hay is home to a family of rabbits, I’m not sure if they are pets or food. A makeshift curtain pulled across the open end of a cab-less bus makes do as home and Janos’ wife prepares lunch at an improvised outdoor kitchen. A small white dog watches me carefully.

His mornings are spent sifting through junk and construction site debris usually collected the day before. Freeing metal rebar and reinforcement from old concrete with a sledge hammer. In the afternoon he rides his bicycle and trailer five miles into the city to scour the streets and numerous construction sites for scrap metal.
Bratislava is a city riding a wave of reconstruction as old buildings are being torn down weekly to be replaced by shopping parks and business centres. A full bicycle trailer of scrap metal will buy Jano and his family enough food for two days. But although he’s a man carving out his daily existence from scrap metal he seems both at peace and content with his world and how many of us can say that?
more photos from Heavy Metal Lifestyle
This photo essay was published in Story Annual

The Museum of the Mind

2007-02-09T14:25:00.000+01:00

Walking through the neighborhood with my camera one day someones curiosity sparked a conversation. Seasoned with the usual whys? what fors?etc. In reply I said I'm collecting memories. This is not such the throwaway statement as it appears. We are so busy these days chasing down one success or another, building ourselves bigger, better homes, putting a little by for the winter of life. We hardly have the time to stop, sit and think where its all going. In our hurry we lose track of time and we tend to notice things only by their absence. When they are gone.
My instinct pulls me to the soon to be absent. To what will eventually be relegated to the museum of the mind. People become abstract; a line in a newspaper column, a headstone, a faded photograph. A memory.
The achievements of a person the measure of a persons toil, the mark, the footprint is not left by only a few but by all. If we could slow down, look and appreciate the marvels that exist in the everyday it just might be possible to fill up the museum of the mind.
Everday I passed through some garages near my house and saw this old Skoda sitting there with bust tyres and thick peeling paint. A throwback to the past. Once someones pride and joy; now abandoned, exhausted and unwanted. Whenever I tried to photograph it if the light was good there was always something else in the frame to spoil the harmony. Day after day throughout the summer I walked through the garages. Enclosed on three sides by apartments and usually filled with the residents new cars. I felt it was hopeless, I would never take the picture. Then one day I passed through and there it was alone with just enough sunlight coming through the branches to make the scene flicker and dance. I ran home picked up my camera and managed to shoot one frame before a new car pulled up and parked directly behind the old Skoda. The next day I walked through the courtyard only to find an oil patch on the broken concrete next to the tree where the car once stood.