"help us sing the story of our land"

"tell us a story from before we can remember"

first dream

                                                                 Dobra Voda          winter           2016

a different kind of silence

                                                                                    Vratna        winter      2015

There is something about mountains that make you feel calm. The morning mist winds its way around the tall pines, somehow leading the way forward and at the same time shrouding that path in mystery. The light changes every few minutes, one moment brilliant blue sky making you squint at its sharpness and the next a cold blanket of cloud as the light all but goes out. This is the Mala Fatra mountains in the North. Mountains and hills create a 13 km sq valley of forest and golden grassland.

the sea as a reflection of mood

                                                                                       Brighton            2015

Photographs can lie about many things, but they have a way of telling the truth about ones mood or emotional state, they somehow reveal what we are trying to hide from the world.

time flies

                                     Bratislava     winter     2004

Scanning negatives from the first rolls of film I shot in 2004 made me think again about how you always remember where you were and what you were thinking at the time you took a picture. I try to  to understand so much of what happens in life, but I don't think I could function without the help of art. All kinds of loss that a person experiences can somehow be channelled by creativity into something that has a life of its own, something that has the power to heal and bring with it a form of hope, something that can ultimately be shared.

I was living on the 8th floor, it was winter and I remember looking out the window at all these birds flocking around a cable that had been strung between the buildings, I picked up the camera and took this picture, a few seconds later all the birds flew away. I thought there was a musical quality to the birds, the pattern they made in the sky and the sound of their tiny wings beating against the silent winter air. So much has happened from that moment to this and working on this book is making me revisit these experiences again, and also realize that I didn't make these photographs out of curiosity, I made them out of love, and as a way to say thank you to life.

nothing preserves like neglect

Yesterday I received a copy of my book from the printers. It is a collection of black and white photographs I made in Bratislava from 2004-2010. People, places and situations, many now gone make up a portrait of the city during this period of change. The book will be available to buy in early 2016.

down by the river

                                                 Bratislava        winter        2015

sometimes all the answers we ever needed are right in front of us

                                           Koliba             winter            2015

remnants

                                                                             Koliba        winter         2015

Miro

                                                            photo by Miro Miklas

I met Miro my second day in Bratislava, more than 11 years ago. I went to the camera store, looking for a darkroom to rent so I could process my films and see what I had been photographing. The shop assistant spoke English and so we started a conversation about photography and I asked if he knew anyone who could help with my quest. He replied maybe, if you come back here at 6pm I can take you somewhere and you can see. I returned later and went by tram with Miro to Mileticova, to the house where he lived. In the basement was his fathers darkroom which he had begun using to print his own photographs. He said you are welcome in my house and to use my darkroom, and gave me a key.

Since then I have seen him get married and watched his two boys grow up, and witnessed him develop into a photographer that has used his old rolleiflex camera with patience and empathy to create an amazing collection of images of his children growing up.

Happy 40th birthday Miro.

inspirational books

                                                                       "winterreise"    by Luc Delahaye

walking III

walking II

walking

I have walked the streets for hours, for days, for months. Walking to find answers to questions that I don't fully understand. If there are any answers in the photographs then I can't see them, I only imagine there might be. I can't say why I noticed this or that and what it represented to me, I just know I was there and I stopped briefly and then moved on.

youth

the moment is over

In visual terms there has been nothing like photography in the history of the world.
There is no vocabulary for it, vocabulary has to do with painting.
Photography literally stops something dead, it's the death of the moment.
The second a picture is taken, that life is held, and stopped and over
That moment is over.

Richard Avedon

images and questions

what do you see
when you look at me?

night

Memories don't come in neat lines,
they come in bits, you have to piece them together.

time gone by

                                                                                                                 2004

                                                                                                                  2014

broken

                                              Bratislava        Autumn      2015

                                                                   notebook          2015

first snow

                                                                     czech republic       winter       2015

Paris

                                                                           Paris             spring         2011

déchirant

european month of photography Berlin 2016

I have been invited to submit work from these two projects to exhibit in Berlin 2016

changes

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