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Personal statement by Slovakian photographer, Martin KOLLAR
“31st August 2019 … from that moment on, the way I look at the world has changed. Everything has changed. Maria’s untimely death, her decision to end her own life, has made a distinct cut, a sharp delineation of the before and after.” (Martin KOLLAR)
Background information, content
"The photo volume 'After' by Martin KOLLAR was formed in the wake of the death of his partner, Maria. As time slowly went by after the cataclysmic event, he cautiously started to browse through his photographic archive. He was returned to the years, months, and days they spent together by the scores of materials from trips they made to location-scout and film together. In their last two years together, they had visited various research centres and public institutes as they started to prepare and shoot 'Chronicle', the film they were to make together.
These excursions into the past happened in various stages, from his original inability to bring himself to open the archive, through to periods of obsession during which he was unable to stop browsing through the multitude of photographs of his and Maria’s past life. What gradually started to emerge from the pictures were hidden contexts and threads he had not seen before. Martin KOLLAR started to assemble them, but not with the aim of reconstructing their life. Instead, he sought to express how the before transcends into the after; how the most anticipated events always find you unprepared." (© Mack Books, 2022)
Book reviews
"The photo volume 'After' by Martin KOLLAR is a poignant yet surreal elegy … In its reflection on permanence (or lack thereof), transition and defining junctures, After hits close to home for audiences dealing with the fallout of a shared disruptive moment." (© Aesthetica)
"The world speaks to those who question it. And it doesn't always say what we want to hear. A punch in the stomach, but it's the book of the year." (© Il Foglio)