to de, tem typkum jsem chvili veril, ze se jim to fakt povedlo nejak zaridit :))

Kdybyste někdo věděl o nějakých dobrých fotkách/fotografech s cirkusovou, varietní apod. tematikou, pls odkaz do pošty. Díky. Časově neomezeno.

http://www.sonjabraas.com/
http://www.simonnorfolk.com/
http://www.xavierribas.com/index.html

Stop it! That'll give me nightmares! Thanks a lot! ;-)

check the huge scar on his belly. maybe that's an answer to your question about the poor dude's health. the melon must've got out thru a cesarean, for real...

Now I'm scared!

But I had to laugh about the melon and how he is presenting it. :-)

diabolical he is ;) http://www.ivanpinkava.com/en/showcase.php?photo=1

I don't know that Diaboli guy but there is one picture in the "Czech Eden" book in which his look-alike still has all his hair and even a beard. In all the other pictures he is all bald like in the picture where he is standing in the water with his girlfriend holding (I assume) their child. As I said at first I didn't even realise it's the same person. When I did, this conjured up fears of cancer, illness etc. Some general uneasy feeling that can also be felt in some other pictures. Yet he looks like he's alright with how he looks, leading a normal life. I think that was interesting.

now i realise, i give talks like mad, yet i never seen the actual book ;). might as well be it would change my opinion completely, as i only saw them few pics on the web. so excuse me fwench ;)

>he looks like this guy from Advocatus Diaboli by Pinkava, don he?
exactly!

he looks like this guy from Advocatus Diaboli by Pinkava, don he?
as for the concept of the whole series, i think the "half-​fictional half-​diary-​like essay" description is pretty much fitting.

if somebody spread out these in front of me and said: "Behold, Czech Republic," i would give him a rather quizzical look in return. it's too incomplete and too focused on details to be a faithful documentary of a country. this is more like "what we americans think that should be pinpointed as typically czech & all the other cool stuff i happened to shoot there." ;)

but then again - what is more real? the way an american sees it (and makes it look somewhat more dramatic in his pictures) or the way we see it with our eyes blunted by everyday reality? for - who's da realest?! :))

well, I had the feeling that I have already seen the man from the couple. manwoman..., that was it!

I have never seen it before, but I like it as well.
it does not look "that much" exotic to me. I have seen many places like that and strange people here in Czech Republic. I think that Mathew is a sensitiv observer with a sense for mellow humour. I think that he does well with this piece of his.

arthur, i don't. in fact i have to admit it didn't even occur to me that it might have been staged.

Re "Czech Eden", I have the advantage (or maybe disadvantage) of having read the essay by Ivan Klíma in the book as well as this text by Michael Famighetti on Monteith's website:
http://www.matthewmonteith.com/texts/czech_eden.html
It is pointed out in these essays that these pictures are really not meant to be a documentary about a place, but rather a half-ficitional half-diary-like essay by someone who happened to spend some time in a foreign country.

Could it be that some of your critisism is just a natural skeptical reaction towards an "outsider" taking pictures of "your" country? I really don't want to offend anybody here... just a thought. I think if some American photographer would make a book "Austrian Paradise" or something I'd also be skeptical.

I do like the book although on some days more than on others. The pictures are very well done technically, nice to look at. But I wonder how much do they really say as a series? Those often-covered themes, loneliness, alienation etc. I mean, they are beautiful pictures and sometimes I see connections between them, although there are also some photos I have no idea why they are included in the book. I mean, I like the pictures but I'm not sure if I "get" the concept. Sometimes when I look through this book I get the impression that Matthew simply took some pretty portraits, landscapes and still-lives and relies on the viewer to make up his own story.

Btw, the couple that can be seen in this picture http://www.matthewmonteith.com/czech_eden/6.html
are Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek Alt:
website: http://www.manwomanunfinished.com/
found the info here:
http://www.shanelavalette.com/journal/2007/12/21/aleksandra-vajd-and-hynek-alt-man-woman-unfinished/)
In the book they can be seen in several pictures, as a couple as well as alone - although I didn't realise this at first.

Tomas, how do you know that picture is not staged?

hmm... http://www.matthewmonteith.com/czech_eden/17.html
in my opinion this would be hard to capture even on 35mm - i have great respect for authors who can produce this kind of material (i mean, with emphasis on the decisive moment) with large format.

i've gone through the whole thing and i like it, to me it's done with great skill and not at all overdone. it's very polished all right, maybe that could account for what others will call "exotic" or "impressive."

well, i'm not patriot, i hate this nation more than you can imagine...
but i still urge :)
cos for czech inhabitant the set is not "wow, that's the country where i live" but "wow, where is the place? i have to go there and take a picture of it"

that is the point... we are exotic for most of west europeans as good as balkan is exotic for us... you can never get rid of this "searching for the different" when you take pictures in other country... thats normal... the hard thing about is is to keep it under control and I think he did that pretty well... there are some shots that really fulfill that category "whow what the hell is this" but than there is many honest ones... so that overall makes this serie one of the better ones when it comes to foreigners photographing in postcomunist country.