The first photograph of Viktor Kopasz that I can remember is the photograph of a celery on the cover of the revue Souvislosti. With view to the selection of photographs that Viktor chose for this exhibition, I decided to target my short text on photographs of vegetables.
Everyone who has ever come in contact with the history of photography in any way must have come across the perfectly spotlit black-and-white photograph of peppers by the American photographer Edward Weston from the turn of the 1920s. Although there were many attempts to interpret this photograph and to find associations with many different forms (often with sexual undetones), Weston was only interested in capturing the fascinating form and texture of peppers.
In 1972 John Baldessari published a book called „Choosing: Green Beans“. In the foreword he explains the rules of a game in which people were asked to choose only one bean pod while the author did not influence the criteria of their choice in any way. This resulted in a series of photographs with three green bean pods and a finger pointing at one of them. Baldessari uses this method to show the arbitrariness of the choice of the depicted object.
What makes the vegetable of Victor Kopasz specific? Regardless of the neutral white background, which he used the same as Baldessari did, Kopasz´s vegetable creates a space for many other images, reminiscences and associations – the criteria of choice not being accidental. At the same time we cannot say that in this case we are witnesses of a mere photographic estetisation of nature (as in the case of the famous pepper by Edward Weston). The determining factor for Kopasz´s vegetable – the same as for his book – is the fact that it is „home-made“, has its own history and is linked to a specific place. It contains excess pressure which sends out a more significant message than the chosen method of photographic treatment.
Hana Buddeus
