Ladislav Vallach
(19.11.1958 Komárno)

FOTOFO
Galéria Profil,
Prepoštská 4,
Bratislava


in Photograph Gallery Profil, Prepoštská 4,814 99 Bratislava

 

Opening hours: 1 p.m. – 6 p.m. except Mondays

Vallach started taking pictures at the age of fifteen,using his father's camera - a Flexaret. Following his unsuccessful attempts to enroll at the School of Applied Arts, he went in for a senseless course of study at a gardening school in Piešťany. He graduated in Garden Architecture, a subject he carefully avoided ever after. His first photographs appeared in an army periodical during his military service. Alongside his civil employment at a savings bank, a machine-engineering plant and a production co-operative dealing in photo-work, he has pursued photography uninterruptedly. In order to have his pictures published in the press, he also wrote accompaying reportages. In 1996 he joined the journal Komárňanské listy as a reporter and that same year passed over to the Press Agency of the SR (TASR) in Komárno where he still works to this day as a regional correspondent for southern Slovakia.Gradually, he also began to take pictures for TASR. The Agency profited by the advantage of a writer and photographer in one person and sent him out on travels by planes that had a seat for a newspaperman. He thus made trips to Macedonia,
Kosovo, The Netherlands France and Belgium. Privately he also paid visits to Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, the Czech Republic and Norway. On all these travels he photographed the life of people he met - also including that in the refugee camps in Kosovo and Macedonia after the end of the NATO bombing raids.

He co-operated over a long period of time with the periodicals Život, Domino fórum, Slovensko, Új Nö, Žitný Ostrov, made book illustrations, held two solo exhibitions in Komárno, one in Rovinka-near-Bratislava, and took part in team exhibits in the Czech Republic, Germany and Slovakia. He was a member of the Union of Slovak Photographers. Beside other distinctions, he also won a gold medal at the Slovak Exhibition of Reportage Photography at the 6th J.M.Petzval Biennials in Piešťany. At the present time his reportage
photographs appear under the heading TASR in several Slovak dailies. The collection Európa(nia) originated from material he has photographed since 1990. He is still working on this project.