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The photographer and sister of mercy Hermina (Justina) Pacek is a special and unique case in the Slovenian space as well as elsewhere. There are several reasons for this: in the1950s only a few women in Slovenia and Yugoslavia pursued the occupation of a photographer, as this was mostly a »male« profession. However, it was all the more peculiar that a sister of mercy should also be a photographer. Regardless of the specific circumstances, the implications of Sister Hermina's photography, produced as a result of her work within the sisterhood in Belgrade as well as in the field, are surprisingly diverse. Regarding the topics, her photography touches upon various fields: documentary, historical, medical, social (e.g. the elderly, sick and needy in the remote villages), and ethnological (e.g. Letnica in the north of Kosovo).
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My text presents two sets of documentary photos taken in the fever of the Romanian revolution in 1989 at the town of Székelyudvarhely. Though neither of them was a professional journalist, both photographers (Ferenc Balázs and Károly Szabó) were strongly determined to capture the events of the streets, the typical moments of the upheaval, the genuine moments of joy and anger. Today these photos have an important documentation value, giving a local narrative of the events of the Romanian Revolution.
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While there are quite a lot Hungarians at the forefront of the avant-garde, in photography and the movie industry (most of them émigrés), visual arts have proverbially been somewhat neglected in Hungary. And not only in the last fifty years. Excellent poets all around, a wide appreciation of fine poetry, outstanding photographers far and wide—and much visual illiteracy, blatant, rampant bad taste, even in Budapest.
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The title shows the possibilities of using theoretical approaches to photography as a historical source and points out that the use of photography in the Slovak and Czech historical science is in contrast to the Anglo-American or German environment at the edge of interest. Author deals with the iconographic method and the semiotic approach. The iconographic method has established itself primarily in the history of art. Its analytical principle consists of a description of the displayed objects, their relationships and explanations of the discovered contingency. The semiotic approach analyses photo by decomposing a photographic image (character) on a set of smaller characters (referents). The photo image is therefore perceived as a special text encoded by a specific character system that fils the role of the communication medium. These approaches are limited in Slovak and Czech historiography, in a small range of work that the author analyses.The photograph was recognized by the International Committee of Historical Sciences as a historical source in the early 1930s. Despite this fact, historians have been avoiding to use it for historical research almost half of a century. We may find the reason in the previously absent methodology, the researchers focusing on the written sources did not know how to work with such a picture source. A significant turnaround in the interest of visual material occurred in the 1960s, when photography became a scope for social scientists. This attention has subsequently moved to other felds of science, including history as a consequence of research of everyday life history.The aim of this study is to introduce the theoretical approaches for using photography as a cultural and historical source. The first part deals with an iconographic method and a semiotic approach. The second part of the paper focuses on the positioning of photography as a historical source in Slovak historiography, pointing to the fact that its use in Slovak historical science is still on the periphery, unlike in the Anglo-American or German environment.Criticism of the source is an important step before its analysis. Concerning image sources, photography is a special phenomenon, because reality is not displayed on the basis of analogies but as its reflection. Additionally, although we are aware of its ambiguity, we tend to approach it as a piece of evidence illustrating one objective truth. The subject of criticism is to discover not only the authenticity of the source, circumstances, the place and the time of its origin, but also information about the photographer’s personality, the origins of the source and the factors influencing its content. Using the criticism of the source we may judge whether it is a genuine source or a fake.The iconographic method was originally introduced in the history of art for analysis and interpretation of paintings, and later specifically adapted for interpretation of photographs. The analysis consists of three levels. The first is a pre-iconographic interpretation, which consists of the marking of individual objects and events. The second level is an iconographic analysis that assigns importance to each subject. It is based on professional artistic and historical knowledge and knowledge of contemporary realities. The last level is an iconological interpretation of the inner meaning of the work of art. At this level, images become a useful testimony for cultural historians. An important prerequisite for proper iconographic image analysis is the expert knowledge of the researcher from the selected period. Researchers often need to use other, e.g. written sources such as literary sources. This method has been criticized for its overly intuitive, speculative nature and indifference to the social context.The semiotic method is one of the youngest but most important approaches to analysis of photograph. It is characterized by the fact that the photographic image (sign) is subject to decomposition on a set of smaller attributes (referents). This method puts more emphasis on the individual contradictions between the displayed attributes and unlike the iconographic method, draws attention to what is not captured in the photograph. Semiotic analysis consists of two phases of the analytical process. The first is a denotation that is analogous to preiconographic interpretation. The photo consists of several elements that must be named at this stage; it is important to dismantle each element of the image no matter how insignificant it may appear at first glance. The second phase is a connotation that is key for interpretation of photography because it involves the assignment of meaning to all the elements of the image described in the first phase.By connotation of the individual attributes and as consequence of the mutual interrelation between the components of the image, the photograph is taken as a whole. This method is most often criticized for not taking into account contextual information important for the analysis of the photographic image. The main difference between the iconographic and semiotic methods is that while the principle of iconography consists of a description of the objects displayed, their relationships and the explanation of the revealed contexts, the semiotic approach perceives the photographic image as a specific text encoded by a specific character system that fills the role of the communication medium. The researcher can choose the right method to find out what information he wants to learn from the photo.From the analysis of Slovak historiography, to which is devoted to the second part of the study, shows that work with photographic material as a source is marginalized in historical science. Evidence of this is the absence of relevant historical work, in this case the photograph fulfils an illustrative function. It is therefore important to present a number of works in the feld of art history, which, in terms of their interdisciplinary approach, also affect historical science. They deal mainly with the Slovak history of the twentieth century, namely the lifestyle, propaganda or visualization of a woman in visual culture. The lack of selected publications result in insufficient methodological grasp of work with the photographic source, in most cases the authors approach the analysis of photographs in an intuitive way.There has not been published a relevant historical publication that would work with photography as a historical source in the Slovak historiography, a greater interest in such a type of visual material lies in the feld of art history. The reason we may see in fact that the acquisition of art-historical methods as well as the formal and content analysis of the work belong to the study of the history of art. We see another reason in the feld of historical science itself. While the interest in photography in the Anglo-American environment is noticeable in the 1980s, Czechoslovakia was part of the USSR, and historical science developed in a completely different way under the influence of the regime, which was until the fall of the communist regime. In the nineties, Slovak historiography had to deal with the research of topics that were undesirable in previous years. The overcoming of this disability is visible only lately with the arrival of a new generation of young historians reflecting trends in Western European historiography.
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What can an actor do to reduce the waste produced during his work? Sándor Anna, who works as an actress at the Theatre of Miercurea Ciuc, employs reusable makeup remover disks instead of disposable ones – as discussed in this short essay. The attached photo shows such a textile disk used by Anna.
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Born in the Transylvanian city of Târgu Mureș, the photographer and journalist Lajos Erdélyi was deported to the Auschwitz “death camp” in in the summer of 1944 when he was only 16, and was released in 1945 from the Dörnhau concentration camp, Lower Silesia. As he recalls it, his passion for photography has turned into a profession by pure accident when he was a child. The young Erdélyi had the opportunity to take a few snapshots of Miklós Kállay, then Prime Minister of Hungary in the Horthy regime, during his offi cial visit to the child’s hometown; later, he started working on portraits of several Transylvanian personalities and doing pioneering work by bringing to light some valuable photographic documents from diff erent archives. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, we have published, in the October 2018 issue of “Korunk” journal, an overview of his career entitled The close-up photography of Lajos Erdélyi. In the present text, Lajos Erdélyi recalls his experience of the Holocaust, his return and beginning of a new life in the context of his double minority status: as Hungarian in Romania and as a Jew among Hungarians
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With the Internet and social media claiming their part in daily life, the victory of the image over the written word has truly been cemented in today’s globalized and digitized society. Pictures speak for themselves in any language, and networks such as Instagram and YouTube are here to prove it. How has this affected the idea of the value of an image? Can it be asserted that fine art criteria have been removed and an image’s sole function is as content accessible to anyone, identical to the subject it depicts? The following text aims at providing answers to these questions while looking at the tendencies in the socialization of photography in Bulgaria since its beginning until the present day, in different socio-political formations and with the technological development. The text also compares tendencies from around the world both historically and today with the objective of establishing a true and summarized depiction of the changes in the visual norm as a consensus between the creative drive and conservative thinking, between the mythological and research perception of the world.
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The review describes the publication of Octavian Saiu concerning the theatrality of the photographic art and the photographic magic of theatre.
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The purpose of the article is to identify the historical-art basics of Photography as a type of Photo Art and Design activity. The methodology consists in the interdisciplinary approach is proposed using system-structural and socio-cultural methods, which made possible a retrospective generalization, as well as coverage of contemporary trends in the development of Photographics. Scientific novelty consists in theoretical understanding the stylistic and technological transformations of Photography in the context of Visual Culture, which was in first studied in Ukraine. The authors analyzed the art-aesthetic aspects of Photography in various types of Design. Conclusions. During the last decades, the elevation of Photography and its recognition as one of the most relevant art forms occurred in the cultural-information space. According to results of comprehensive study the theoretical and practical world experience in the development of Photography, the term-base, in particular Photographics, was deepened and expanded; visual means of artistic expressiveness (frame composition, colour harmonization, computer specific effects, stylistics) were specified; and their extrapolation to new spheres – to Digital Art and Digital Media was justified.
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This article argues that Roland Barthes’s understanding of photography went through a significant shift: from his early semiotic interpretation in the 1960s, he moved in the late 1970s toward an ontological theory of photography, inspired by his understanding of haiku. Discovering the noeme of photography through haiku, Barthes realised that both haiku and photography were unsuitable for speaking of love. Therefore, he wrote La Chambre claire as a phenomenology of photography, to create a ‘monument’ to his mother, as photography was inextricably intertwined with the death of his mother.
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On the example of the ethically controversial photographs made by Zbigniew Zielonacki from the public trial and execution of Arthur Greiser, the Nazi deputy in the Wartheland, the author demonstrates the visuality of local memory at the intersection of the narrative and non-narrative, private and public, individual and collective sphere. The photographs have become an inherent element of Poznań inhabitants’ memory of World War II and its outcomes, although they did not fit any of the emerging main war narratives.
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Purpose of Article. Research and analysis of the pioneering embodiment of the visual and plastic decision in the process of creating the film “Chasing Two Hares”. Methodology. Research methodology is based on general scientific principles of objectivity, structural-functional and analytical methods in the analysis of theoretical works and figurative art direction and visual decisions of films. The scientific novelty of the research is to analyze the main components of filming technology of the story, to solve the problems of creating a stylized image in the adaptation of dramatic plays on the example of "Chasing Two Hares".
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A number of false ideas circulate at the level of common sense in connection with the photographic image. The most frequent ones are those referring to the so-called photographic language, to the hidden grammar of the photographic image, or to the amount of truth contained in a photograph. The fact that the photography does not have a language in the proper sense of the word, does not have a grammar and does not claim to reveal the truth does not diminish in any way its dignity as a medium of expression. My article aims to demystify the photographic expression in order to clarify its specificity
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Mostar Cultural Events (October - December 2019.)
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The cross is an object that can take many forms and meanings depending on the country where it was made, the ethnographic area to which it relates, or the people who used it. This study offers a diachronic perspective of the cross. Its polyvalent character is also illustrated by its uses as an object which marks a certain space or as a funeral mark for the deceased. The significance of this object is explained by the studies of the reasearchers who studied them, but also by the testimonies of the craftsmen who make crosses as memorial monuments in the villages of Urşi from Vâlcea county and Pietriș from Olt county, Romania.
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Do 2007. godine bilo je manje poznato da se kod povjesničara Pavela Scheuflera u Češkoj nalazi fotodokumentacija od oko 300 fotografija iz Bosne i Hercegovine, a od toga velik broj iz Cazina. Fotografije je napravio Rudolf Bruner-Dvořák na početku 20. stoljeća. Fotografije Rudolfa Bruner-Dvořáka dalesu novu dimenziju shvaćanju života Cazina s početka 20. stoljeća. Na svojimje fotografijama prikazao život na cazinskim ulicama te je stalnim kontrastima i simbolima dao doprinos identifikacijskim procesima i omeđivanjima. U organizaciji Ambasade Češke Republike u Bosni i Hercegovini, izložba njegovih fotografija postavljena je 2008. godine u Cazinu. Dojmovi posjetitelja bili su različiti, a u podlozi svih nalazila se zahvalnost zbog postavljanja izložbe koja je svojevrsna potvrda kontinuiteta Cazinske krajine.
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Until 2007 it was not widely known that the historian Pavel Scheufler in theCzech Republic had in his possession a photographic archive containing over300 photographs from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a large number of which weretaken in Cazin. The photos were taken by Rudolf Bruner-Dvořák at the beginningof the 20th century. These photos have brought a whole new dimension to ourunderstanding of life in Cazin in the early years of the last century, showingvivid depictions of life in the town streets and overflowing with constantcontrasts and symbols which contribute to the processes of identification anddelineation. In 2008, an exhibition of his photos was organised in Cazin by theCzech Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Visitor impressions differed, but allof them expressed gratitude for the effort put in organising the exhibition, whichwas deemed to be an indication of the continuity of the Cazin area.
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Băile Herculane, a small town of about 5,000 in western Romania, claims to be the oldest spa town in Europe. According to legend, the Roman god Hercules once stopped in the valley to bathe, lending the town its name. Today, a statue of the hero stands proudly in the center, but his crumbling surroundings appear to be just a few years shy of becoming a ghost town.
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