place

                                                                                        Brighton              2011

This place you are looking for is it on a map? Does it have roads you can walk down? will you know it when you see it?

when you are young your emotions are so much closer to the surface

                                                                      Tomas       Bratislava           2013

when it comes to emotions questions are always better than answers

                                                                           Bratislava        summer    2015

Be strong, be courageous and take risks, but always love and respect what ever you do. Even when you fail you learn. Scrape away the surface and find depth, find what is real about something, and that real that you find will be beautiful and true and it will be yours forever, yours to keep in your heart.

my nephew is 10

                                                                        Lucas         Brighton         2015

watching the crows fly past same time each afternoon

the whole week stuck in my apartment, fever, tonsillitis, antibiotics, eating soup, drinking tea, reading Flannery O'Connor, listening to Sufjan Stevens, thinking too much, watching the crows fly past same time each afternoon, then the evening comes, time to sleep, time to dream

my new view

                                                                        ruzinov        winter          2016

the sky was made for birds and for daydreams

rainbow

                                                                      bratislava         winter          2015

walking over SNP bridge yesterday afternoon and seeing this magnificent rainbow that stretched from one side of the danube to the other, I was again reminded of how nature can be beautiful and simple and original.

catching snow

                                                       2016

                                                                bratislava            winter            2016

rise

                                                                  koliba            winter            2016

on a lighter note

                                                        dobra voda              winter                 2016

the man

The man stood silently watching me take photographs for about ten minutes. He approached and looked carefully at what was in front of me and then at my camera, he smiled and said hello, I smiled back and returned the greeting, he nodded and then continued on his way. I had been waiting for him to pass me as I wanted him in the picture, to give both scale and human content to the landscape. But now when I see his figure slowly moving away he seems to add a loneliness to the photograph that wasn't there before.

my garden

                                                                           koliba          winter         2016

today

                                                                           koliba           winter         2016

"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.