Lucia Nimcová
Lucia Nimcová, a graduate of the Institute of Creative Photography at the Silesian University in Opava, has been occupying a rather specific position in contemporary Slovak photography consciously merging and balancing on the edge of social documentary and artistic staged photography deeply anchored in conceptual area. Her photographs, or better to say, photographic researches are always conceived in series, often with the open ending resulting either in photographies, a book, a video, curated show or website project (www.bsp.sittcomm.sk). She often inserts written words, or colours and blue-tones found black and white photographs, adding to it a bit of a personal experience, perception and appropriating it as her own “reality” or memory.
- THERAPY00:00:15.746
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- It's a pity I won't be here during these dates.00:00:25.112
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- Otherwise I'd go see them.00:00:29.976
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- In 2006 I went to Ukraine00:00:33.670
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- and visited several healers.00:00:37.096
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- I spent most of the time in waiting rooms,00:00:40.596
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- listening people talk. I wanted to hear why they came there.00:00:44.563
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- I often do this kind of observation.00:00:50.266
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- - Did you take any photos? - No.00:00:54.699
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- My photographs always result from a long time00:00:58.199
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- I need to decide if it's possible to take them. Often it's not.00:01:03.434
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- But it doesn't matter.00:01:08.863
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- Why are you in Humenne now?00:01:14.029
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- Well, I was born here.00:01:18.800
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- And when I come to Slovakia, where else could I go?00:01:22.615
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- In Bratislava I would be a stranger like in Amsterdam.00:01:27.792
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- Maybe even more of a stranger than in Amsterdam.00:01:33.292
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- Even though I have many friends in Bratislava00:01:38.292
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- because I used to live there.00:01:43.231
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- Every four or five years I move somewhere else.00:01:47.579
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- It's not planned but it's always been that way.00:01:53.186
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- Time is a very important issue in my work.00:01:57.705
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- One work can take me as long as six years.00:02:02.731
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- I like to explore various approaches to reality.00:02:07.384
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- What is reality, anyway?00:02:11.962
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- We're like a commercial for the Karpatia hotel.00:02:15.712
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- In fact, I took you to Humenne to show you its highlights.00:02:21.582
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- This hotel has a wonderful interior.00:02:28.336
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- I took there one photo for the "Instant Women" project.00:02:32.770
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- Unfortunately, the whole hotel was completely ruined00:02:38.786
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- during the renovation it underwent.00:02:44.341
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- But that often happens to good interiors in Slovakia.00:02:48.341
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- I studied Ukrainian at school and both my parents are Rusyns00:02:55.169
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- so I know the Rusyn language.00:03:01.123
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- What beautiful eyes you have!00:03:04.685
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- Do your works involve animals?00:03:17.316
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- Only recently I realized that many of them do.00:03:20.816
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- Next year I'd like to make a book of photos for children.00:03:25.721
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- I've been taking photos of animals since I was 1400:03:31.478
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- but I've always done it only for fun.00:03:37.368
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- I didn't even know I had so many of them.00:03:41.189
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- One day my niece asked me why I had to travel so much00:03:46.086
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- so I tried to give her an answer.00:03:52.700
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- I worked on it since 2006.00:03:57.201
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- The result is something like a book on my relationship00:04:00.880
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- with Juanita. The working title is "Juanita Diary".00:04:06.922
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- It presents reality as something to which we give a shape.00:04:12.258
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- It's not something that is "given" to us.00:04:17.833
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- Cool, they already have new windows.00:04:22.255
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- This is the place where they sell trees and such.00:04:26.528
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- And the front room was made into a yoga room.00:04:31.493
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- I always look forward to my 2 hours a week spent here.00:04:37.313
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- No, I'd just look at it, it's good to look at.00:04:45.261
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- We like this still life of yours!00:04:53.541
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- Are you going to make wreaths for All Souls' Day with it?00:04:58.480
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- And is that a pot of goulash? Oh, cabbage soup, nice.00:05:03.995
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- The period of normalization in Czechoslovakia.00:05:11.094
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- Normalization, let me say it again.00:05:16.291
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- In general, I'm quite skeptical towards this word00:05:19.939
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- but I made a book about it called "Zvysky" (Leftovers).00:05:25.478
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- It's about my generation, the product of normalization.00:05:31.234
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- Everything was planned for,00:05:36.344
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- young couples would get apartments in housing estates.00:05:39.844
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- All newlyweds were entitled to get one.00:05:45.344
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- The result was a massive baby boom,00:05:50.851
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- during which I was born.00:05:55.351
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- My generation remember communism00:05:58.851
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- but we were still young when it broke down.00:06:02.851
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- I made works called "Unofficial", "Zvysky" and "Double Coding".00:06:07.479
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- "Unofficial", "Leftovers" and "Double Coding".00:06:14.044
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- "Unofficial", as in "official reality".00:06:18.902
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- "Leftovers" concern private lives in the era of normalization.00:06:22.902
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- And "Double Coding" is an analysis of banned movies00:06:29.338
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- shot between 1968 and 1989.00:06:36.659
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- "Double Coding" combines quotes from the movies00:06:43.108
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- and sentences from my diaries written during six months00:06:49.823
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- I spent watching each movie five or six times,00:06:54.870
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- to find out why they were banned and how censorship worked,00:06:59.693
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- why some movies were inappropriate, while others were not.00:07:05.222
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- There's no logical structure, it was all very subjective00:07:10.722
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- and the rules changed over time.00:07:16.222
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- It was interesting to analyze that.00:07:19.722
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- It's a big theme for me - what's objective and what's not,00:07:23.786
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- and whether it's important to see the difference.00:07:29.368
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- Earlier in my life I wanted to be objective00:07:34.367
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- but I grew out of it. In 2006, I think.00:07:39.367
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- That crossing used to be guarded by the police00:07:45.422
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- who stopped cars that wouldn't yield to pedestrians.00:07:51.226
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- It started when the current mayor assumed her function,00:07:56.667
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- although it only lasted for a few days.00:08:02.069
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- She also had those flowers planted.00:08:05.673
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- For me, the project "Unofficial", for instance,00:08:09.996
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- is not a project about Humenne.00:08:13.996
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- It has a wider perspective, and Humenne isn't the main theme.00:08:18.748
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- It's rather about a system running in the whole country.00:08:25.686
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- I just set it here because this is a place I know.00:08:31.223
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- I know the people that are documented00:08:36.191
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- so it's easier for me to make conclusions.00:08:40.414
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- It's always necessary to be familiar with the place.00:08:45.130
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- - Black, strawberry, peppermint... - Black tea, please.00:08:54.260
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- And I'll have a decaf latte.00:08:59.667
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- So, this is a jazz cafe that has never heard jazz.00:09:04.564
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- Text is very important for me.00:09:16.081
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- I've been strongly influenced by literature. I love books.00:09:19.810
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- And I document all my works in the form of text.00:09:26.053
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- Those texts aren't meant for public display,00:09:30.321
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- they just contain notes on my ways of thinking.00:09:36.198
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- I have many notebooks to write down my daily ideas00:09:41.644
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- on my current projects.00:09:46.596
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- I had many activities as a child.00:09:55.725
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- Theater, shooting, basketball, singing, I don't know what else.00:09:59.725
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- I'd just go on a bike from one activity to another,00:10:06.121
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- bringing my parents so many checks to pay.00:10:10.974
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- I really loved the theater club, I went there for 7 years.00:10:15.862
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- I especially liked improvisations.00:10:21.822
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- I'll show you where I used to meet my punker friends.00:10:25.856
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- It was right here.00:10:32.270
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- This is what we used to call "our spot".00:10:35.863
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- It looked different then.00:10:41.037
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- There was this railing where we all used to sit.00:10:44.537
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- Today there's the statue of atefonik.00:10:49.162
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- Look at that pink post, the poor guy!00:10:52.777
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- So we'd sit here, talking about new books00:10:57.488
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- and about what we'd seen, heard or read.00:11:03.193
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- From the age of 14 to 22,00:11:07.991
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- I collaborated on many works with my friends.00:11:12.303
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- We made improvisations, staged portraits and so on.00:11:17.820
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- My parents could tell you about all the people00:11:23.400
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- that I'd bring home.00:11:27.900
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- I love this type of official photographs.00:11:37.530
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- The photographer wants to shoot the crowd00:11:43.825
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- but due to the use of flash00:11:49.466
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- all the attention is concentrated on a single person.00:11:52.966
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- As you can see here, our new mayor00:11:58.551
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- likes to be photographed with elderly people.00:12:02.051
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- It was probably them who voted for her.00:12:07.502
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- Well, these are not so great.00:12:12.139
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- We should try the other notice board,00:12:15.639
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- it usually has the best stuff. This is all new.00:12:19.882
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- But this one isn't bad. Nothing special, though.00:12:25.083
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- Maybe that one's better, down there.00:12:30.045
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- It's as if each mayor had a new board with new photos.00:12:35.345
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- Some people may not even perceive it as photographic art00:12:40.797
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- but I find it very interesting.00:12:46.739
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- These boards are also among my favorite,00:13:10.586
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- maybe even the favorite.00:13:15.964
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- I always look forward to seeing new photos here.00:13:19.490
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- - How often do you come here? - Usually once a month.00:13:24.644
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- Look at that one, for instance.00:13:30.017
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- It's amazing. See those flying plates?00:13:33.616
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- They're hanging in the air. And the photo radiates joy.00:13:38.508
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- Notice the use of flash. And look at the switch.00:13:43.791
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- It brings life to the shot. Wonderful.00:13:48.291
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- Now, let's go close to the red building.00:13:57.799
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- This is some cool background music!00:14:02.299
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- So, this is the Vihorlat Cultural Centre.00:14:09.215
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- I worked here when I was 18.00:14:15.710
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- This is where I learned that my colleague Juraj Kamer00:14:19.270
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- made official documentation of every event in Humenne00:14:26.155
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- and that he had an extensive archive.00:14:32.562
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- Only a few shots from it were used.00:14:36.558
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- I came to take a natural interest in the archive.00:14:41.909
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- It meant studying an archive created on commission.00:14:47.222
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- It was built up every day, for 20 or 30 years.00:14:53.648
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- I could compare the events repeated over those years.00:14:58.354
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- I could even see which mood he was in00:15:04.464
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- or what the weather was like on a particular day.00:15:07.964
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- I saw the people on the photos get older.00:15:12.273
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- It was like time travel.00:15:17.029
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- In the archive I chose a set of errors00:15:21.691
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- in the content that I could find.00:15:25.895
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- For instance, the archive also contained unofficial photos,00:15:30.289
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- made when the photographer needed to finish a film roll.00:15:35.794
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- These photos depicted his friends or other people.00:15:41.618
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- But they were all stored in the official archive, you know.00:15:47.163
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- I studied these small things, traveling in time00:15:53.451
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- with the photographer and feeling his moods.00:15:58.239
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- I made effort to take notice of all that.00:16:03.698
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- With this kind of experience I went to the streets of Humenne00:16:08.697
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- and wanted to take photos of the places and events00:16:14.652
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- that remained the same. Only their names may have changed.00:16:23.206
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- For me it's very easy to take good photographs.00:16:30.222
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- In 2000, a friend told me that to make a good documentary,00:16:35.761
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- you need to take a photo of yourself.00:16:41.394
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- I often remembered that, without seeing what he meant.00:16:45.511
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- After my project "Instant Women",00:16:50.761
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- during which I photographed many events00:16:55.413
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- in Slovakia, Ukraine and elsewhere,00:16:59.586
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- sleeping in the car and using up hundreds of film rolls,00:17:03.529
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- I can say that I know how to take a good photo.00:17:09.891
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- But that's not what I want to do for the rest of my life.00:17:17.091
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- It's not enough for me.00:17:23.753
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- I like to move on.00:17:29.384
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- I enjoy thinking about things that I don't know,00:17:34.258
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- to find why I don't know them and how they work.00:17:39.418
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- I also think a lot about the world of photography,00:17:45.754
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- about how it works, what logic it follows,00:17:51.501
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- what cliches it uses, what recurs and what is outdated.00:17:56.683
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- At the same time,00:18:03.710
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- I can imagine using only text or making only videos.00:18:09.196
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- My use of photography has to be justified by a purpose.00:18:14.712
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- Made by Erik Sikora00:18:31.261
man this is so awesome :) I was almost crying, really touchy made!