Ivan Pinkava: Heroes

The leading contemporary Czech photographer, Ivan Pinkava (1961), within his almost thirty year career, created his own visual language, which fully corresponds to the his view of the world. The Figures and Shades in his work overlap and are a reflection of thought processes that are typical for traditional Western culture. The author intentionally enters into familiar iconographical situations to - somewhere just slightly, elsewhere radically - alter, jumble, rename, empty or cloak them, or sometimes just see them in another light. Pinkava ignores the established view of ancient and biblical characters, and behind the historic scenes, he finds something common that is valid for both the present and the future – the prototype of human insecurity of their own physical impermanency. Eventually, it all comes down to a personal coping with death. If the nudity of the youth in Pinkava's photographs is pictured as wasteful and self-centered on one hand, it is presented in sharp contrast with death on the other hand. Everyone walks alone and in silence to its inevitable end. The word "heroism" is losing its appearance so characteristic for the history and the legends and acquires an intimate and pathetic meaning.