What is seemingly the most accessible form of the photographic medium – the family photograph – has been transformed into a vital theme in the oeuvre of Swiss photographer Annelies Štrba (1947). Through the depth of her treatment, her ability to see new qualities in what has been viewed a thousand times, she was able to depict the reality of her personal family life in such a way as to transmit a truly valuable, all-embracing message on interpersonal relations.
With breathtaking ease, she transcends the boundaries of the banal and the concrete, bringing the photograph and its resonances into a timeless space yet all the while retaining its tender subtleties. Štrba has for some time developed the family theme through both still photography and video in parallel. One essential shift in emphasis, though, occurred in 1997, when she abandoned photography to concentrate exclusively on work with video and the subsequent computer animation of its individual sequences. Utilising special technical approaches, she began to create self-standing pictures of time-stopped “filmstrips” in fantastic colours, displaying her capabilities of a nearly magical imagination. An essential theme remaining present in the work continues to be the moments of family life – instants that are hardly even remembered thanks to their simplicity and quotidian transience. A second, yet no less vital parallel theme of Annelies Štrba’s is the series, starting from the very outset of her career, of photographs and later videos of cities that she has visited. Modern technology has given the artist the means of self-expression through nearly visionary slices of urban reality, which in certain instances acquire, under the influence of political events, a tragic tone of commemoration of the threats of human civilisation, particularly underscored through their contrast with her other work.
The present exhibition is intended to present a cross-section of all phases of the oeuvre of this truly exceptional creative personality, from her first black-and-white photographs from the late 1970s presented in the form of a slide show up to the most recent series of coloured images depicting the motif of elves. A central element of the project, significantly located in the centre of the exhibit itself, is an extensive series of video films. Štrba works to an unusual extent with real time, thus revealing to the viewers her ongoing method of seeing and the background to her work with artificial colouring in the self-standing pictures.
Even though this important photographer has displayed her work across the world as part of many solo as well as group exhibits, the Prague exhibition is most likely to be her first retrospective show of work outside of Switzerland.
With support of PRO HELVETIA, Arts Council of Switzerland.
Curator: Petr Nedoma
