Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday

 

Pictures copyright: © 2005, Peter Marshall unless stated otherwise.
All pictures here were taken with a Canon Ixus digital camera. .

Saturday 11 June (continued)



Sarah Saudek, "Jan's right hand."

 


Fears: Fear of Truth, held by Pilar Albajar from Spain

 

 

 

more from Saturday

Sarah Saudek talked about her work next. She worked with Jan Saudek who taught her photography, and now she is a photographer while he seems to spend more time painting, although they each painted a cow recently.

Sarah really is a woman who works from her heart, and her images perhaps have a serenity that distinguishes them from those of her still more famous partner. Her pictures, like his, are about life and about relationships, and are often tender, often humorous, often profound.

Later I talked to the young Polish man who was looking after her show when I visited. Like me he admired her work, but thought that some of it was too explicit. Certainly it is work that would get itself censored in some places, but I think there is never an intent to shock or be in any way pornographic. Her pictures celebrate the human body and relationships between men and women in all their aspects.

Pilar Albajar from Spain works with her husband Antonio Altarriba; generally he supplies the ideas for their work and she puts them into production, both as photographs and as audio-visual presentations. Antonio was unable to come to Poland.

The top picture of her shows her holding what I felt was perhaps the best of their works, from the series 'Fears'; this one with the brick walled glasses is 'Fear of Truth.'

Also impressive was a whole series using hands, 'Manufactures', including 'Voracity' where a pair of hands morph towards the jaws of a crocodile.

This was work that had the international audience laughing, especially over the pictures on sex. In some ways it reminded both Stefan Bremer and me very strongly of some of the animations from Monty Python.

Immediately I saw Pilar hold up the 'Fear of Truth' I knew how I wanted the picture, combining the red-brick glasses with some excessive red-eye; fortunately my camera cooperated, and her red nails added a little more to the image.

With the Canon Ixus, I always shoot without using the so-called red-eye reduction flash; it works slow enough without adding further delays. Usually I then simply remove the red-eye - which is normally strong - by using Photoshop or other software. Just occasionally a 'mistake' like this can improve the picture.

 

FotoArtFestival Diary

Peter Marshall

Bielsko-Biala, June 9-13, 2005

 

FotoArtFestival on the Wayback Machine