Photographs by Igor Grossmann
Text by Martin Slivka

Description

This book portrays the everyday life of the Slovak village in the middle of the 20th century. The photographs bring to life ways of living and folk customs that have forever vanished into the past.

In Igor Grossmann's Images Gone with Time, starkly beautiful photographs capture the essence of the Slovak village at the moment of encounter between the old and the new, when centuries of tradition beheld the dawn of a new age. The world of the mountain village comes alive in these photographs: the countryside formed by traditional ways of farming, buildings blended into the scenery, and family life in the village in its ordinariness and its bright, festive moments.

These images are revealing, and this vanished world is part of the human record, even if the images are gone with time.

Grossmann's photographs are the land of our memories of home. They are a record of our existence, a guarantee of our survival.

Special Features

• 125 photographs by Igor Grossmann
  
• English and Slovak text
  
• Quotations from Slovak literature

Author Bio

Igor Grossmann, a native of Slovakia, is uniquely qualified to capture the starkly beautiful images of the vanishing Slovak village life. Grossmann’s keen eye for the heart of folk life is the result of an intimate knowledge of the mountain villages still largely unknown to the wider world. He worked as a pharmacist in the villages while also pursuing a keen interest in photography. In 1966 his avocation became a full-time pursuit. His work has been exhibited in Vienna and Bratislava.

Comments and Reviews

A Book about the Original Slovakia in an Original Way

In the 50s-60s of the 20th century, life in the Slovak countryside, particularly in villages and remote, secluded settlements, still preserved the originality of a distinctive association under numerous aspects. This attracted the attention of well-known photographers, e.g, Marketa Luskacova from the Czech province illustrating the unusual ethnic group in the upper Hron river valley, or Martin Martincek from among Slovak authors who portrayed the people of Liptov. In the 1960s-1970s, Martincek published four books on this topic which proved an inspiration to the foremost Slovak film director Dusan Hanak to create his film Pictures of an Old World (1970s), rated as the best Slovak film. Several photographers remained in the background, mainly because their works failed to appear in book form or some other mode of publication. Until recently, one of these was also Igor Grossmann (b.1924) who, 50 years back, systematically portrayed the life and customs of people for the most part in another typical Slovak region — that of Rajec. He published his pictures scattered in various journals and only lately, after these many years, decided to collect and edit his earlier works from 1950-1965 as a book which simultaneously serves as a guide to his ongoing travelling exhibition in the U.S.A. In it Grossmann has included not only his best works published during that period, but also photographs totally unknown so far, selected from his own voluminous archives. He divided the resulting collection into precisely defined chapters: Home - Roots - Beauty - Pleasure - Memory - Heritage. He asked Milan Rufus, perhaps the most distinguished contemporary Slovak poet, to write a Preface and the introductory poems to the various chapters, and Martin Slivka from the Music and Drama Academy for an expert study. He himself wrote the introduction and the epilogue to the whole publication and is also the author of the graphic design.

This gave rise to a book unique in several respects. First and foremost, thanks to the photographs in which Grossmann in his early works, preceding those of others, clearly reveals himself as an author with his own distinctive handwriting and an ability to raise his admiration and respect for the people of this country to a work possessing not solely artistic traits, but also ethnographic and sociological values and make it into a convincing document. What is of importance is that he has succeeded, in his own personal way, to get close to what is original in the life of simple country folks and, after the manner of a systematic study, give testimony to it — testimony remarkable by its content and form. Given that all the texts (including Rufus's poems) are in English, the book addresses the reading public at large both by word and picture.

Although books with this topic published in Slovakia are among the best in our pictorial literature, Grossmann, by his precise build-up, ingenious arrangement of pathetic and matter-of-fact photographs, and linking of the poetic word and expert analysis, has added something specific. The images are not gone completely with the wind; quite the contrary, they have ripened, matured, and today provide an incredible amount of evidence regarding jewels of our past. Through this book, Grossmann has taken a well-deserved place among Slovak photographers whose work forms part of the contemporary history of world photography.

— Vladimir Vorobjov

Images Gone with Time, a book of photographs by prominent Slovak artist Igor Grossman, recently copublished by Slovak publishing house FO ART and American publisher, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers (B-C), is now available. This joint project can serve as a model for Slovak publishers, who lament the small and economically weak Slovak marketplace and who are unable to publish publications without state subsidies or substantive sponsors. (This model has already been "discovered" by our clothing industry since Slovak textile workers sew at the behest of foreign buyers using the buyers' trademark, patterns and materials). During Socialism there was possibly only a single commercial publishing house in Slovakia (Slovart), which was attaining noteworthy economic results on similar publications. Unfortunately, even after ten years of democracy and market economics, Slovak publishers have not yet found many viable co-publishing partners from abroad, even when they are publishing the works of Slovak authors in foreign languages or bilingually.

The American publisher Bolchazy Carducci Publishers, whose president has his own roots in Slovakia, has for many years been offering such cooperative ventures to Slovak publishers with the condition that the prepared work be edited in English by B-C so that the text would be rendered in respectable English. B-C would give the co-published work its own ISBN number and registration with the United States Library of Congress ("CIP"), which means that the book would be listed in the American listing of published books and its sale in the American marketplace would be simplified and enhanced. The book, equipped with CIP registration and an American ISBN, would thus reach all informational systems (just like each of the fifty thousand annually-published books in the USA). A curious situation for a Slovak publisher is that the American co-publisher will take for the American marketplace several times more books than would remain in Slovakia, just as with the Grossmann work, Images Gone with Time.

There is good fortune for certain Slovak books in that they have their own sponsors. Also, the co-publishers of Images Gone with Time found appreciation in the general sponsorship of Devin Bank, A. S., People's [Ludova] Bank, A. S., and the Slovak-American International Cultural Foundation, Inc.

— Ivan Reguli
(Translated from Slovak by Gerald Sabo, SJ)
Hospodarsky dennik, Bratislava
March 10-11, 2000

If Trnava is the "Slovak Rome," so now the world-renowned photographer Igor Grossmann (born in 1924) is certainly the Paul Gauguin of Slovak photography. At the very least, this is because Grossmann decided to renounce the security of his career in medicine in order to dedicate himself exclusively to the enthusiasm of the hobby of his youth — photography.

The daring of both men has historically fully paid off. The first, at one time a stockbroker, became one of the founders of modern art. He made Tahiti famous through his insanely intense colors. His monumental allegory asked, "Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?" Now, in a new book of wonderful photographs, a physician from the little town of Rajec in the Slovak countryside of the has interceded for Slovakia and its "own legitimately-established world" through photographic images "etched into the memory of the earth." These images are not subject to fire or sword, nor to any other destruction; they will be an eternal witness of who we are.

In the time of superficial "signals," prevailing in our unequal dialogue with the headquarters of prestigious Western institutions, the work Images Gone with Time is a welcome alternative, with its well-grounded and serene ethnographic-sociological probe into the recent past of the Slovak village. The Slovak village — a self-supporting community of small technologies — was a free, "individual, independent and distinctive, an age-old enclave. Polished to a strikingly beautiful perfection by an unchanging existence, ancient and uninterrupted." (Milan Rufus, "The Secret of the Pebble in the River")

Fascinated by this living paradox, Igor Grossmann lets his camera determine and at the same time eternalize the essence of the village universe. "The deeper he plunged himself in its world, the more valuables he brought forth from its depths to the surface." (Martin Slivka)

Images Gone with Time is a photographic record about the struggle of a people for their daily bread, about love and joy in a culture redeemed with difficulty, paid for with great effort — where the sense of obligation and duty was the primary virtue — and also about the tasteful, artistic imagination of the farming society, which spins beauty from wood, colors, cloth, and reverie. But at the same time it is also a Grossmann event — a happening of extraordinary empathy, respect and affection toward something as "simple as home," with a fidelity to memories as an irreplaceable part of our identity.

The carefree and foolish carnival joy of Shrovetide springs forth from the photography found on the front dust jacket. Exuberant riotousness, unbridled play. But, for this book the bewitched physician took out from his box of photographs also scenes of the most sorrowful moments of this closed-up community. The harmony between the documentary and the artistic is as characteristic for Grossmann's photography as for this Images Gone with Time. It is actually a photographic "carved Bethlehem-creche" of the Slovak world, which is physically no more. Its status as a legacy is indeed very special.

The woman binding twisted straw onto the sheaves at harvest time, the fields on the hillside, the winter countryside with the peasant fertilizing it, the wooden cornices on a folk structure, the ploughman, the shrine of the cross in the field, the old woman on her way to a gravesite, the woman laundering in a frozen stream, children's games according to some old custom, the woman in folk costume in front of the decorated home, the woman at the hand-loom, the man transporting wood from the hills on sleds in snow, the coachman with horses carrying straw from the hills, the man pulling the hay-sled up a steep hill during haymaking, a man cutting hay, a woman digging potatoes in the hills, the peaks of wooden homes — all a true treasure for the researcher of Slovak ethnography. The photographer intimately recognizes this life determined by the cycle of agricultural work, and its inherent ethos. He offers it its well-merited homage.

In catalogues of the most renowned world libraries there are hardly any books about Slovakia in English — the English-language books on Slovakia that are available simply do not fulfill the technical and aesthetic criteria for publications to be sold in the North American market. Yet, with regard to Images Gone with Time — thanks to the cooperative efforts with an established foreign publisher — the book does just that. Besides dealing with publishing and marketing issues, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers has seen to the presentation of the book in an English-speaking world, to the purchase of copies for wide sale on world markets, and to the guarantee of accessibility of this publication in wholesale book trade warehouses in North America, so that this masterpiece would be available to individuals, to large international booksellers, and to internet book sales sites.

The bilingual publication Images Gone with Time (Obrazy odviate casom) is the outcome of the cooperative efforts of poet Milan Rufus, film director and author Igor Grossmann, art critic Martin Slivka, designer Anton Fiala from the Slovak publishing house FO ART, and, last but not least, the American publisher Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. This black and white photography book represents a stunningly beautiful embroidery of images and ideas about Slovakia since before the mid-twentieth century. It also consists of the skillful verbal-iconic articulation of the meaning and beauty and dignity — indeed even the noblesse — of everyday life and destiny of a modest people. The ambition of those who participated was to examine — with affection — and to recall the times when plowing was truly difficult work and working hard was still a socially revered virtue. In the case of Dr. Ladislaus J. Bolchazy (a Slovak-American, a scholar, and the president of Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers), it is also a pioneering and nostalgic decision to make books from Slovakia accessible to the English-speaking world. Indeed, the cooperative effort with his publishing house in the United States resulted in a superior editing of the English text of Images Gone with Time, registration with the United States Library of Congress ("CIP") and the guarantee of North-American International Standard Book Number number. These secondary issues are crucial to the success of Slovak books in the world market, and for the past ten years, Dr. Bolchazy has been emphasizing them during his yearly visits to Slovakia. Ignoring these secondary matters, we can, no doubt, but curse our unfortunate lot, but the world's gates will remain closed to us nevertheless.

Every book published in English and financed from public sources must have a co-publisher and distributor in America if we want more visibility for our country and our culture. There is no point in more vitriolic complaints about how simply conceited and ignorant the "West" is — that Westerners do not have even an inkling of what an age-old and cultured European people we Slovaks are! Let's tell them this just so nicely. This means, of course, telling them nicely in English and in a way they are sure to hear.

— Dr. Emma Nezinska
(Translated from the Slovak by Gerald Sabo, SJ)
Slovo, Bratislava
March 29/April 4, 2000

Images Gone With Time is a fascinating and visual historical and anthropological record of a place and way of life now gone. Igor Grossman's starkly beautiful black-and-white photographs capture the essence of Slovak village life in a mountainous region of Central Europe at the moment of encounter between the old ways and the new day of European development, when centuries of tradition were about to give way to the modern age. This is a striking survey, a powerful visual tool documenting what was about to be altered forever by the technologies and ideologies of the second half of the twentieth century. An informative text by Martin Slivka places the images into a sound cultural context and enhances Images Gone With Time as a significant and invaluable overview of a people and a way-of-life now but a bit of European history, a yesteryear culture that will never come again.

— Midwest Book Review
May 2000

Grossman has presented us with a gem of a book, a treasure for anyone’s library.

— Michael Kopanic
Jednota
February 2001

Photographer Captures Slovak Culture and Images Gone With Time

(ARA) – Travel for many people is about the sense of adventure and excitement that comes along with being in a new or foreign place. But upon arriving at their destination, many realize that an even deeper adventure lies in the search and discovery of the region’s history, which has helped shape and form the characteristics and personality they are seeing today.

Dr. Igor Grossman, an artist from the small town of Rajec in the Slovak countryside, has managed to bring history and the culture of his homeland alive in a new book of photographs, Images Gone With Time. “In the mid-fifties the little town of Rajec became my workplace and my home . . . . I came across beauty unknown to me, in wood, colours and cloth. I discovered the values of the simple, unsophisticated life, enchanted by this world, I tried to capture it in photographs,” writes Grossman. The compilation of black and white photographs not only reflects the images of Grossman’s heritage, but a way of life in all of Europe that has faded in modern times and exists only in memories and photographs.

His images represent the resilient lifestyle of the Slovak villagers who lived their lives in the mountainous terrain of Central Europe, a terrain that dictated the agricultural cycle of life for the inhabitants. He captures the splendor of the sloping landscape and those of the mothers, fathers and children in it. These photographs speak to viewers about the cultural background of many Americans’ European ancestors. They relay a universal language to not only people of Central or Eastern European heritage but also encourage viewers of all backgrounds to take heart in the cultural history of their own ancestors throughout the world.

Contributing his articulate, descriptive words to Grossman’s collection is Milan Rufus, a renowned Slovak poet, professor of literature and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Rufus writes, “Duty was first and foremost. Nature ruled it - sometimes kindly, sometimes sternly, and occasionally cruelly.” Through the eye of his camera, Grossman pays homage to the labor that guided villagers' hands as Rufus’ words evoke even deeper emotion from the faces and actions of the people and the magnificent land that surrounds them.

Grossman’s photographs also offer a distinct interpretation of the beauty that is prevalent in the everyday lives of the Slovak villagers; a beauty he describes as being “sad and happy at the same time.” Images of decorated village houses remind the viewer of the joyous times once spent in the abodes, but also the sadness that now exists with the extinction of such buildings and their inhabitants.

From harvesting potatoes, transporting wood in the deep snow and washing clothes in freezing creeks, Grossman’s ability to incorporate his lens invisibly gives his photographs and his subjects an air of true sincerity. The photographer not only concentrates on the everyday noblesse of his subjects, but also captures the light-hearted moments of celebration that speckled the lives of the Slovak villagers. With images of festivals, such as Shrovetide, he is able to transfer the emotions of his subjects and the beauty of their expressions using his artistic documentary style.

Through these striking images, Grossman reveals documentation of a region in Europe and of a people who are little known to western society. But with this collection, he continues to relay the same human values that are present in today’s world. With help from Bolchazy-Carducci Publishing, who pioneered the decision to print the text in English and Slovak, both are helping to bring the world’s attention to a period of history that holds extensive beauty and memories that are able to touch people worldwide.

Examining the landscape of the countryside, the farms that grace the terrain and the people who lived in this beautiful part of the world, evokes the viewer’s own memories of days past. Whether or not you have been fortunate enough to visit this beautiful and unique area of Europe, Grossman’s photographs offer willing adventurers the opportunity to take away more from Central Europe than what they see there today.

Images Gone With Time is available at Barnes & Noble bookstores. For more information on Igor Grossman’s photographs and his book, visit the Bolchazy-Carducci Web site at www.bolchazy.com.

Courtesy of ARA Content, www.aracontent.com, e-mail: info@aracontent.com

Press Release