Portfolio / Jozef Ondzik (Slovakia) / Dana Halušková



"I want to talk. Not shout, stun or shock. I therefore choose the simplest mode of expression. A standard lens, view, processing. The photographer is apparently to stay as far away from the event in the picture as possible. To conceal himself and be invisible. He is just expected to permit the situation, transported on to the area of the picture, to be legible and understandable."

This is how Jozef Ondzík himself characterizes his pictorial response which embodies the principles of work by a documentarist who is an observer of the world about him. He eschews stylish topics, gives preference to an apparently impersonal approach of a standard mode of processing the iconic response without having recourse to striking effects. By using the black-and-white medium of photography he enhances the authenticity of the situation presented as "black on white."

However, he does not renounce a subjective presentation, does not remain invisible as he would wish to, does not immortalize reality through photography, does not document, but presents in a creative manner his own version of what is observed. He concentrates attention on man in everyday situations. The most characteristic compositional dominant in his photographs is a pair of people together constituting the episode, tension. The paired grouping, the psychologico-social miniature drawings, a minimal episodic unit that incorporates within it antitheses, connections, themes. Through the intermediary of micro-relations it intimates wider contingencies and circumstances of the episode. It creates picture stories and essays by its specific manuscript. It is not photography of extreme passions, emotions and boundary situations; he is interested in the behaviour of individuals, the society under current circumstances which is evidence of a well thought-out composition on the part of the author and his penetrating eye. The tension and dynamic force of the composition introduce the observer in medias res.

                   


Together with Tomáš Leňo he has for long been photographing conditions in the north-eastern tip of Slovakia, the milieu and life of an ethnic minority - the Ruthenians - with their particular culture. From this most extensive cycle of his photographs one senses a disappearing world, an archetypal agrarian and religious culture of the inhabitants whose centre of gravity resides in their relationship to the soil and to God, traditional values in the true sense of the word. The instantaneous takes capture the life of these people on whom no trace has been left by either the industrial revolution or the information technologies. The rural-mystical life of this community is presented in the form of a humanistic document with a certain awe of and evident respect for this culture with which both Ondzík and Leňo are closely associated from a geographical point of view - both being natives of Humenné. A naturalistic presentation of man's relationship to animals, limiting their position to a mere utility aspect, constitutes the most expressive part of this cycle. Here, detail comes to be the essential bearer of meaning. The photograph of a husband and wife ploughing their field contains, in addition to the vivid relation to the soil, also information regarding the religious disposition of the couple shown by a pendant in the form of a cross on the man's neck. The Ruthenian topic, however, is not the only one in Jozef Ondzík's works. His range of take is much broader, but he always remains faithful to the social document.

Through 2002, the Institute for Public Affairs continued for the second year with the project Illustrated Report on the State of the Region. After Martin Kollár, the second adept to this prize became the physician-photographer Jozef Ondzík.

A contribution by this project is a comparison of the reports by Kollár and Ondzík who have a different perception and make use of different approaches to their topics. Following Kollár's spectacular, bizarre-exotic exhibition, Ondzík came in with a symbolic-epic collection.

                   


The final work with the subtitle "From the Countryside to Town" could be viewed within the "Month of Photography" at the House of Art on the SNP Square in Bratislava. Migration from a provincial town to the capital proved to be a source of inspiration and also the title of the project. Moving from the country to town embodies a confrontation of these two worlds that are conditioned economically, strategically and by capacity. In this concept he proceeded from his own experience in moving from Humenné to Bratislava, The photographs from Bratislava, smaller towns and villages constitute a balanced set of miscellaneous pictorial texts. Slovakia as presented by Jozef Ondzík is a country of contrasts: while the capital represents a modern technical and civilizing movement, the eastern part of the republic forms the border-line of Catholic and Orthodox culture of Europe. A specific feature of this region is a fragile, overlapping frontier in the encounter of two worlds.

By combining pictures of the "old" and the "new", the natural with the civilized, the traditional with the modern, the religious with the atheist, Ondzík composes a mosaic of the divergent Slovak world. This rather schematic comparison fails precisely to characterize Ondzík's black-and-white photographs which, however, reject the black-and-white vision of the divergences. His photographs are no manual-didactic pictures of divergences - through his lens he finds points of contact in the behaviour of town and countryside.

In the photographic collection on view, symbolism is especially reflected in the choice of the milieu and the background of epic incidents - housing estates, shopping centres, amusement parks, village taverns. It is precisely the capture of analogies in regional extremes that makes of the Illustrated Report on the State of the Region such a trustworthy, high-quality and matchless collection of observations

                   


Jozef Ondzík, together with Martin Kollár and Andrej Bán is one of the founding members of the association Slovak Documentary Photography. He started with his exhibiting activity when only a student in 1984 and since then has had several personal and group exhibitions both at home and abroad. Besides exhibiting and publishing activities, he has also acted as curator and lecturer.

Diagnosis - a photographer: that is how we might summarize the work of the physician Jozef Ondzík who treats through his photographs with an emotive humanistic charge.

Jozef Ondzik was born June 22, 1964 in Humenné where he passed his final secondary school examination in 1982, then in 1990, graduated from the Medical Faculty, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice as M.D. He is working as anaesthesiologist at the Slovak Institute of Cardiac and Vascular Disorders in Bratislava. From 1998 till 2001, he studied photography at the ITF in Opava (Prof. Birgus, Assoc.Prof. Štreit). He exhibits and publishes his photographs since 1980 and also acts as lecturer and curator. He predominantly pursues documentary photography and is one of the founding members of the civil association Slovak Documentary Photography.

                             


INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS
1990 Výber z tvorby. Dom kultúry, Snina.
1998 173 faxov. Kultúrne centrum, Poprad.
2002 Slovensko 002. Obrazová správa o stave krajiny. Dom umenia, Bratislava

GROUP EXHIBITIONS WITH TOMÁŠ LEŇO (SELECTION)
1984 Kultúrne centrum, Humenné.
1997 Ruský Potok. U Michala, Ruský Potok.
1998 Ruský Potok. Osvetové centrum, Humenné (Mesiac fotografie, Bratislava).
1999 Rusíni. Múzeum rusínsko-ukrajinskej kultúry, Svidník.
2000 Rusíni. Dom Matice slovenskej, Snina Rusíni. Šarišská galéria, Prešov.
2001 Rusíni. Galerie auf der Pawlatsche, Viedeň. Rusíni. Geléria Profil, Bratislava. Rusíni. Goetheho inštitút, Bratislava.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)
1984 Petzvalovo bienále. Bratislava.
1986 Chebské bienále. Galéria G4, Cheb.
1988 Chebské bienále. Galéria G4, Cheb.
1998 Nové mená v slovenskej dokumentárnej fotografii. Dom fotografie, Poprad. Mail art. Galéria Andyho Warhola, Medzilaborce. Warholova ulica. Galéria Andyho Warhola, Medzilaborce.
2000 B&W. Humenné, Přemysl.
2001 Moderna, postmoderna, postfotografia. Národná galéria, Bratislava. 8 x 3. Galéria Ľudovej banky, Bratislava.
2002 Rodinný album.sk. Umelecká beseda, Bratislava; Štátna galéria. Banská Bystrica; Koniarikova galéria. Nitra; Oravská galéria. Dolný Kubín; Bruntál Najlepšie je s mamou a otcom. Námestie SNP, Bratislava.