“I know what I'm not: I’m definitely not a documentarian,” photographer Viktor Kolář asserted in one interview, distancing himself from being categorized within a genre that doesn’t interest him. He reaffirms this stance in a new photography book published by KANT, following the success of his now-hard-to-find books Ostrava (2010) and Canada 1968–1973 (2013).
While Kolář’s images speak extraordinarily eloquently about a specific place and its transformations over time, they do so almost incidentally. In truth, his focus is on moments of sudden and unique — sometimes nearly improbable — “encounters,” in the sense that the Surrealists advocated for that term.
His visually striking black-and-white photographs include all the essential features of mining and industrial Ostrava, yet the resulting portrait of the city is imaginary rather than descriptively realistic.
That’s why in the accompanying essays by Manuel Anceau, Jan Balabán, Martin Dostál, and Jaromír Typlt, Viktor Kolář is considered not only as a photographer, but also as a kind of poet — one who uses images instead of words.
