Robo is nine years younger than me. We graduated from the same high school – Arts Industry in Košice – however when Robo enrolled, I had just left. I finished the Prague FAMU before the Velvet Revolution, while Robo became one of the first graduates of the Bratislava VŠVU photo course after the Velvet Revolution. I was planning to move from Prague to Bratislava after university, but was unable to find a studio in Bratislava, so instead decided to remain in Prague. After college, Robo returned home to our native east, a place where I have been returning to for over the last 40 years. A place of home where Robo and my paths started to intertwine in the 90’s and have continued to merge to the present day.
Every time I arrive at the ‘bottom end’ of the native east, and when time allows, Robo and I spend one or two days together, wandering in nature, debating about our work, about photographs, about cameras, about exhibitions, about books, about movies, about friends, about relationships, about health, about what will guarantee us good health, about the past, the present, about plans for the future, and about life. Then it is evening again, and I have to run for the train we both hope will have at least some delay. “Thanks, take care and see you soon; to be continued next time”.
And between all of this, we sometimes also manage to exchange photographs. I have a number of Robo’s pieces in my private collection, pieces I was able to request and choose of my own accord. These are, among other things, works from his cycle called Light to the Darkness (1993-97): ‘Yellow Rain’, ‘Dart Aquarium (or Fish)’, ‘Polarization by the Satellites’, and the ‘Middle of the World’. I like these pictures very much. I believe these photographs very successfully express the meeting and interaction of two forces: nature with the power of its visuality, and the playfulness of a creative experiment. Robo photographed these images onto raw medium format color negatives, which he subsequently manipulated in the studio in a postproduction process that could be named: manual photoshop. But I’m not going to tell you more because the master chef would not be very happy that I’m leaking his secret creative recipes.
To finish, I just want to say, I really like and care for Robo, as well as his photographs.