Personalities of Slovak Photography: Anton Šmotlák 1920 – 1970
Anton Šmotlák
Edited by Aurel Hrabušický and Filip Vančo.
Slovart
English and Slovac
Hardcover
140 Pages
250 x 285 mm
2020
ISBN 9788055643656
The fifth publication by Aurel Hrabušický and Filip Vanč from the edition of Personalities of Slovak Photography presents Anton Šmotlák (1920 – 1979). As a professional, he specialized in theater photography, but from the very beginning he also devoted himself to live photography. He was one of the first Slovak photographers who, within the framework of live or direct photography, took care of freeing himself from the dogmas of socialist realism. Spontaneously and without prejudice, he recorded moments from everyday life in Bratislava, but also elsewhere in Slovakia. He introduced into photography a momentum, an acceleration of events, a decisiveness in the images, a kind of photographic “drive”. In the second half of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, he covered such a wide range of topics and processed them with such understanding as few other Slovak photographers. Perhaps he also succeeded because he was a “benevolent paparazzi”.
(source: http://slovart.sk/knihy-v-slovencine-a-cestine/fotografia/anton-smotlak-1.html?page_id=134458)
About the Series
The series presents the biggest personalities of photography in Slovakia, curated and edited by Aurel Hrabušický and Filip Vančo.
slovart.sk
About the Artist
Anton Šmotlák was born on 15 November 1920 in Nitra. He received his first camera at the age of 13, and when his father passed away, they moved with his mother to Bratislava at the beginning of the 1940s. In 1940, he began to work as the editor of the Slovak Press Agency, later Czechoslovak Press Agency, and he took an interest in shorthand. It wasn’t until the late 1950s that he got involved in professional photography and his work was regularly published by several newspapers and magazines. As a photographer, he collaborated with many cultural institutions. 1970 was the year when two simultaneous exhibitions were held – they were the only exhibitions organised while Šmotlák was still alive. Anton Šmotlák died on 24 January 1979 in Bratislava.
(source: https://www.visitbratislava.com/profile-of-anton-smotlak/)
About the Publisher
The Slovart publishing house has been operating on the Slovak book market since 1991. From the beginning, we have tried to bring our readers books in which content and form play an equally important role, that is, in which high-quality and demanding content is combined with polygraphically and artistically flawless form.
slovart.sk
(source: https://www.slovart.sk/)
