Children 1964 is a selection from a series by Igor Grossmann capturing the lives of children in Slovakia, especially in Žilina and its surroundings, between the years 1963 and 1966.This exhibition has been created as a cooperation between the Central European House of Photography and Anna Schirlbauer, the photographer's daughter.
Igor Grossmann (1924-2013) is included in the names of renowned Slovak photographers (fine-art photography of the second half of the 20th century).The beginnings of his photographic work start in the town of Rajec in the 1950s, where he was transferred for political reasons from Žilina. At this time he worked as a pharmacist and only photographed in his spare time. A large part of his first series, focusing on village life, was created in Rajec. In 1959 he returned to Žilina, and ten years later moved to Bratislava. He began his professional career in 1967 and in 1976 he became a freelance photographer. Throughout his fruitful career Grossmann created many artistic series and valuable commission works. His work is characterized by variety, and we can find different types of photography in his work: from landscape, fashion, advertising, documentary and fine-art, to reportage, portrait and abstract photography, and many others.
The series Children was born in the early 1960s after Grossmann's return from his "Rajec exile" to Žilina. He was already interested in the world of the child in Rajec, but this was only as a part of a larger work devoted to village life. Characteristic of his photographs is Grossmann's interest in recording the impact of the environment on human life; this characteristic also manifests itself in his series about children. But while his photographs of village life appear as if life there has not changed for centuries, the reality of early 60's Czechoslovakia is unmistakably present in the images of the lives of children.
Grossmann did not influence or stage his child models; he followed them into their natural environment at school or in the streets. His photographs show how children were able to appropriate an inhospitable public space among blocks of flats using various games or other entertainment. Images at school show children during classes and breaks, in deep reflection, and their creative work during their art lessons. There are several portraits in the exhibition in which Grossmann was able to portray the character or mental mood of the children. It is obvious that the photographer did not look at the children from above, but directly into their eyes, as equals; who had an interest in their lives, joys and problems.
Simona Bérešová, curator