Photo exhibition 160 years in photoghraphy

The Photo exhibition “160 years of photography”

A European story: Four graduates of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague meet up 40 years after their graduation for the “Four after forty” joint exhibition in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. This fascinating project depicts the cultural development along the lifelines of the photographers Eva Kubinska, Jena Simkova, Jan Stries and Ivan Kostron.

The photographers graduated together in 1977 from the Film & TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) before their artistic works developed against a background of political upheaval in Europe. The artists’ photography is shaped by their individual paths through life, which were drawn out after the fall of the Iron Curtain, both in Eastern and Western Europe. The tale of the four graduates and their photography is one of many moving stories that were written in these epochal European decades.

After graduation, Eva Kubinska was a self-employed photographer for 10 years in Prague before making a name for herself with people photography in Germany. Jena Simkova worked successfully as a fashion photographer for fashion magazines. Jan Stries became a professor at the Josef Vydru School for Applied Art, whilst Ivan Kostron has a successful career as a freelance artist.

The exhibition was shown in the Galeria CIT in the centre of Bratislava from December 2017 until mid-January 2018. Each artist presented a selection of freelance photographic work from the last four decades in the retrospective.

The success

150 visitors came to the vernissage on 1.12.2017, including well-known faces from the Slovakian art and media scene, such as singer Jan Lehotsky, Milota Havrankova, professor at the SUV Art Academy SUV, and the reporter Petr Bucek.

The Slovakian radio station Radio Regina broadcast a report on the vernissage, which included short interviews with Eva Kubinska, Jena Simkova and Jan Lehotsky as well as the gallerist Sonja Hereniyova.