About the festival

Two hundred years have now passed since Niépce’s invention of heliography, dating from 1826–1827. Heliography, a precursor to the daguerreotype, was virtually unusable because of its excessively long exposure time: the exposure for the first photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras, took eight hours. For this year’s programme, we have selected exhibitions that, while drawing on 19^th-century technologies, are firmly rooted in the spirit of the 21^st century. Fanny Boucher (FR) and John Demos (GR) refer to Niépce’s heliography through the medium of heliogravure; Enikő Gábor (HU) revives archaic photographic processes; Jozef Sedlák (SK) draws on William Henry Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawings in his Latencies series; and Vladimír Židlický (CZ) interprets photographic reports from the First World War.

An extraordinary event is the extensive retrospective of the Italian artist Letizia Battaglia (1935–2022), Humanity in the Shadow of Cosa Nostra, which has received well-deserved international attention for its powerful photographs of the Mafia and its victims. In her depiction of Palermo, Sicily – the main subject of her work for almost thirty years – everyday life and violence, major historical events and private life converge. The artist moves beyond the immediacy of everyday reality to create a timeless statement. Following the murders of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992, she decided to stop photographing Mafia violence.

Following our previous explorations of photography from South America, Scandinavia, and Australia, this year we present, under the title BRIT-ISH – Five Exhibitions, Five Views, a fragment of the rich photographic culture of the British Isles. The project is being prepared in collaboration with the La Gacilly–Baden Photo Festival as part of its Culture of Solidarity programme.

Following last year’s retrospective of Martin Parr, we will present a cross-section of the work of another master of world photography, Don McCullin, who captured not only the fragility of the English countryside but also the absurdity and cruelty of war. Documentary photographer Peter Dench examines the contradictions of contemporary culture, which places tradition on a pedestal. For reporter Josh Edgoose, the streets of London constitute a rich world of bizarre, funny, and unexpected situations and characters. In Cig Harvey’s experiments, the body merges with nature, while colour and sensory experience dominate the image. Two of Julie Fullerton-Batten’s series – a story about the River Thames and a collection inspired by Frida Kahlo, created following her visit to the painter’s museum in Mexico City – embody her distinctive style through a masterful use of light, staging, and narratives that hint at hidden secrets.

The exhibition Double Pleasure – Two Poles of the Image will present works by almost 100 Slovak and Czech artists from the 1970s to the present day. Through a variety of approaches – including quotations from works of art, nudes, the repainting of photographs, landscapes, and more – the exhibition will open a discussion about the contemporary relationship between photography and painting.

In addition to these, with twenty-seven exhibitions in total, we are also presenting film screenings, book presentations, discussions, curatorial talks, and a wide range of educational activities.

The number 36 is nothing exceptional. And yet we believe that the 36^th edition of the Month of Photography in Bratislava will be exceptional.

Václav Macek