Anton Smotlak

Smotlak acts as a clever observer who discreetly smiles with understanding and compassion when taking photographs. He is interested in human interaction, spontaneous situations, people eyeing each other as they pass, as well as others standing nearby. Everything passes, water and time, even as they pass each other by. A nostalgic feeling arises thanks to the proper distance of the photographer from the situation he captures.

Photographer, curator, teacher and gallerist. He completed his Master´s studies at the Department of Visual Media of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava where from 2004 to 2009 he was the head of the legendary Photography Studio. In 1966, he founded the journal PARK (1996 - 2002) and served as its editor-in-chief. He has been a member of the Photoport civic association and the chief curator of the gallery with the same name since 2006. As curator, he has prepared dozens of photography exhibitions and presentations at home and abroad. Anton Smotlak specialized in theater photography, but he also worked with live photography from the very beginning. He was one of the first Slovak photographers who contributed to the liberation from Socialist Realist dogma in live and direct photography. He recorded moments from ordinary life in Bratislava and elsewhere in Slovakia spontaneously and free of prejudice. He brought a moment of motion, and acceleration of action and vigor to shots, a kind of photographic drive. In the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s he covered a range of themes. Art critic and historian. He studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, Comennius University, Bratislava. In 1966, he appointed curator of the new media collection and the collection of photography at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava. His field of research is visual art in Slovakia in the last century. His curatorial and editorial projects at the SNG and elsewhere cover Slovak conceptual art and alternative art in general of the 1960s to 1980s, and especially Modern, Neo Modern photography and photographic documents of the recent decades.