CPMag | A renowned painter, letterist, sculptor and printmaker, Eduard Ovcacek is known for his experimental and innovative approach to work, which ranges from visual poetry, works with hand-made paper, digital print, and photography. His new book Photographics presents a little less known body of work that pushes boundaries of photography and printmaking beyond their traditional understanding.
The history of Ovcacek’s photographics, the term he coined for his photo-based printed imagery, began in the 1960s when the newborn Art Informel movement led Ovcacek along the path to the structural and letterist photography. At that time Ovcacek was creating a series of his visual poetry using photographic film as a medium for further image-processing and copying. He placed individual positives or negatives on a photo paper and with this paper he then exposed images of fragments of women‘s bodies (a “sandwich technique”). Thus, the photographics was born. In the last two decades, thanks to rapidly developing digital technology, Ovcacek’s photographics has acquired contemporary aesthetics and unexpected potential for its diversity and variability.
The book “Fotografika” (“Photographics”) includes two essays by Ilona Vichova and Martin Mikolasek in addition to Eduard Ovcacek‘s own commentary on his work.
Fotografika: Published by the Faculty of Arts of Ostrava University, Czech Republic, 2014. Incl. over 200 black and white and few color photographs. Number of copies: 500, 250 pages (240 x 280 mm). Language: Czech, with English translation.
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