from the series Female, 1997 – 2000 / c - print / 29 x 19 cm / ed. 5
Appearing Light - from the series Forest, 1997 / c - print / 27 x 18 cm
from the series Rokytnik, 1997 / c - print / 40,6 x 30,5 cm
ABOUT THE ARTIST
“The way I go is the way back to see the future.“
Jitka Hanzlova
The Czech-born photographer Jitka Hanzlova (*1958 in Nachod) moved to Essen, Germany, in 1982 and studied communication technology with a focus on photography. In her first photographic cycle (Rokytník), which was already produced during her time at university, she examines the individual, their surroundings, and the landscape in which they live. Between 1990 and 1994 Hanzlova regularly visited her native village Rokytník in eastern Bohemia and photographed the locals in their neigbourhoods. The images show children playing in the garden, old people in front of their homes or on the trails and fields near the village. Hanzlová holds her models at a distance and mainly portrays them as whole figures. In the series entitled Bewohner (1994/96) she mapped the inhabitants of the big Western European city where she still lives today: Essen. One can clearly see how this work of Hanzlova follows from her previous cycles Rokytník. Her subsequent series Female (1997/2000) omits the concept of distance by bringing the lens closer to her objects. Hanzlova rather captures parts of the body and sets her focus on knee-length portraits instead of whole figures. Female is the artists second extensive series and includes a total of 53 portraits of women of different ages and backgrounds. Jitka Hanzlova approached her models while traveling through Europe, USA and North Africa – she usually encounters the women directly in the street and takes their portraits right then and there. In the series Forest (2000/05) she has begun photographing more inscrutable subjects by taking photographs in the forests of her Czech homeland near the Carpathian Mountains. The shift away from the individual to the focussing on landscape motifs is an inherent turning point in the work of Jitka Hanzlova. In the sense of a new photographic principle, she takes pictures of trees, bushes and fir trees, as if they themselves were the protagonists this time. Subject and background also build a seemingly inseparable entity in Forest - just as in Female, where women were portrayed as an existential part of their urban environment.
Of late, Jitka Hanzlova has enjoyed world recognition. She held solo exhibitions in the Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), the Photomuseum (Winterthur) and in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Her photographs are regularly exhibited by major galleries in Europe and the USA.