Alena Kotzmannová 

They represent groups of photographs, prints, and objects. At their core is the idea of combining miscellaneous visual motifs which I have found with photographs from my private archive, plus newly made photos. The resulting chapters – individual series of about 5–15 photographs, large size prints and objects – each have their own theme. The themes are built on my previous artistic practice and can be summarized under the terms of archeology of time, looking for traces of the future in the present, exploring the identity of the environment, questioning the aesthetic role of photography, as well as creating new meanings through unexpected relationships of individual photographs.

Each series draws on a specific photographic shot or object, which I then go on to elaborate with the addition of further photographs, with a view to “renaming and redefining” them when set in a new time and place. What I am trying to do is not rediscover the reality represented by the original motif, but rather visually analyze that motif’s seminal elements as proofs of reality being represented by images in ever new ways, dependent on the change of context. I leave it up to the viewer as to how he will connect the internal links between the submitted “evidence”, and, as a result, relate them to the original motif. Mind maps resulting from the proposed relationship (the subsequent synthesis) are based on both individual and collective experience. Photography is presented partly as proof of the existence of the external world, and partly as a trigger of associations in the viewer’s memory.