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House of glass

Soft figures with sharp edges from an overlooked photographer
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
May 14th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Fárová's fragmented figure studies offer an avant-garde take on erotica.
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Gábina Fárová: A bit of poetry


at Galerie Fotografie Louvre Ends June 1. Národní 22, Prague 1-New Town. Open daily 1-8 p.m.

Gábina Fárová’s solo exhibition at the newly opened Galerie Fotografie Louvre is an important (and long overdue) showcase for her work, mainly erotica, made between 1979 and 2002.
Born in 1963, Fárová was raised in an artistic dynasty. Her father, Libor Fára, is a painter, graphic designer and scenographer. Her mother, Anna Fárová, is an internationally respected theorist, curator, writer and arts organizer — and above all, an indefatigable champion of photography, both Czech and international, from the mid-1950s to the present.
Gábina Fárová’s photos were included in a 2006 exhibition at Langhans Galerie dedicated to her mother. It featured works by most of the major photographers of the postwar era, some of whom were close friends of Anna Fárová, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. All the major Czech photographers of the past century were also represented, from Jaroslav Rössler, Jaromír Funke, Jindřich Štyrský and František Drtikol to Josef Koudelka and Jan Saudek.
Fárová’s photos in the Langhans show were, understandably, not part of the main exhibition, and limited to the post-1989 work she did for the seminal but short-lived art and fashion magazine Post (published by the Radost Group). She co-founded this publishing project around the time that she graduated from FAMU (1990), managing the Radost Photography Agency in the same period.
The current exhibition of 35 photos at Louvre presents her earliest work, from 1978, up to a relatively recent project from 2002. The majority of the photos are black and white, mainly portraits and nudes (beautiful young women and a few tattooed men) in solo poses. However, there are also forays into the avant-garde, both retro and contemporary.
The standout of the show is an experimental set of four kaledioscopic erotica pieces, the only color photographs in the exhibit. For this series, Fárová was inspired by a child’s kaleidoscope, and she initially used a small kaleidoscope and a digital camera to make the photos. Eventually she had a large kaleidoscope constructed in her father’s studio, and switched to traditional photographic techniques for the images.
The photos are predominantly nude portraits (again, mostly young women), shattered into multiple reflecting images with special attention on the erogenous zones. The effect is a plethora of body parts and faces in a house of mirrors. Anna Fárová describes her daughter’s “Kaleidoscope” cycle in poetic prose: “The sharp edges of mirrors cut bodies up into fragments as if they were on a post-mortem table. Collage or autopsy, the beauty cruelly portioned by love gives itself up to the game and looks.”
Sometimes there is just a limb or two evident, a thigh or an arm. One of the most poignant shots is of what appears to be a spinning human ball, formed by a section of a person’s arm, thigh and lower back. This and all of the kaleidoscope visions reveal a multitude of new perspectives and variations on our own hermetically sealed worlds.
This cycle was also inspired by a quote by Heidegger, which could well be Fárová’s motto in general: “What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness.” The kaleidoscope images bring or merge bodies together, yet the prisms also distance or separate them.
Fárová’s earlier experimental works are very similar to the avant-garde abstract photography of Jaroslav Rössler and Jaromír Funke, who produced highly stylized works with geometric shapes and shadows influenced by early 20th-century art movements such as Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism and Surrealism.
Another obvious influence is the master of Czech avant-garde erotica, František Drtikol. Fárová’s nude portraits, however, are of our times yet timeless, with the studio backdrops and lighting giving them the feel of photos taken a century ago.
Fárová photographs flowers, and their placement beside the portraits of so many nude women calls to mind the erotica of the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Fárová, however, sees her subjects less as flowers than simply delicate living beings.
“Flowers fade and seasons change,” Fárová says. “In fact, we are here really only for a moment, and photographs show us exactly as we are and how we live even when we are not here any longer.” Thus, her quest is for an immortal liberation.
Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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