The exhibition is organized by Gallery 400 ASA in cooperation with the FPF Institute of Creative Photography of Silesian University in Opava. / Vernissage 19.07. 2022 Gallery ASA 400 in Prague / hour: 18:00 exhibition open until 20.09.2022
Curator Vladimír Birgus
Michal Szalast's extensive series of photographs about albinos from the Tanzanian island of Ukerewe in Lake Victoria significantly corrects our usual perceptions of the tragic lives of people who, because of their different skin color, are hated, ostracized and sometimes killed by their black fellow citizens. This series is not the result of a fleeting visit of a European photojournalist to an exotic African country, but was created thanks to the fact that Michal Szalast managed, with many albinos, to establish closer contacts and gain their trust during an extended stay in Tanzania. Therefore, he was able to photograph them in their homes, at work, during children's games and at doctor's appointments. He became a kind of unnoticed observer, in front of whose lens the people he photographed did not pose, but behaved quite naturally.
The author did not abuse their confidence to create superficially spectacular shots, but with great empathy tried to show, above all, that these people, despite all the handicaps and traumas, want to live similarly to their happier neighbors. He himself puts it this way: "Tempted by the light creeping in, they try to fight an unequal battle with instinct and not feel the warm touch of the sun. In the end they lose and pay for the moment of joy with scabs of infected skin. Someone might even call them prisoners of darkness. However, this someone has not seen the smile on the albino face. It comes from those simplest joys that a person can enjoy whether he lives in a crumbling Tanzanian hut with the burden of the white skin curse or in a European mansion with the joy of the white man's heritage. This is a story about a few of them, about the darkness they have tamed and the light they long for..."
In his Albinosi series, Michal Szalast continues the tradition of humanistic photography, but combines it with elements of contemporary subjective documentary. The impact of his expressive shots is heightened by sharp contrasts of black and white, coarse grain and counterpoints of light and shadow. Equally important is the extremely well-thought-out pictorial composition, emphasizing the symbolism and metaphoric nature of the meeting of various seemingly unrelated motifs, eliminating irrelevant elements and focusing on the main motifs. Often these are hands. The hands of a black woman holding a white-skinned child in her arms or a white hand touching a black hand show that there can be a lot of tolerance and mutual understanding in the relationships between black Africans and albinos.
Vladimír Birgus
Michal Szalast
Born in 1979 in Bytom. Photographer, curator, publicist, film documentary filmmaker and educator at the Institute of Creative Photography of the FPF at Silesian University in Opava, previously worked as a photojournalist for the dailies Dzennik Zachodni and Super Expres and for East News Forum Fotografowie and Polska Agencja Prasowa . He studied history at Silesian University in Katowice and Creative Photography at the Institute of Creative Photography at Silesian University in Opava. He has had author exhibitions in Poland, the Czech Republic and France and participated in many group exhibitions. He has curated and co-curated many exhibitions, including. NahSichten, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main 2018; Made in Opava, Museum of the History of Katowice, 2018; INT/EXT, Transphotographiques, Lille 2018; Three decades, Institute of Creative Photography FPF SU in Opava 1990-2020, Museum of Decorative Arts - House of the Black Madonna, Prague 2020 and House of Art, Bratislava, 2020; 30+. 30 years of the Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava, House of Fine Arts, Opava; Common Opava / Common Opava, Fotofestival, Lodz 2022. He has written texts for several books, including Krzysztof Goluch: One in seven, Ruda Śląska 2017 or Krzysztof Goluch: Hotel, Bialystok 2021
