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Anton Fiala: Australia - Red Inland FOTOFO
A MATTER OF MILLIONS During the years when there was as yet no television, we used to spend our leisure near those compacts with a magic eye. They were to us some sort of a peephole out anywhere, particularly into the world. Through the ether we would get information that propelled the wings of our fantasy to a mighty upswing. I recall what colourful images were evoked in me by the idea that the Australians are our antipodes. I couldn’t get it into my boyish head how they could walk on their heads and not fall off the Earth out into Space. As a matter of fact, I fancied Australia like Slovakia, turned with the head downward. Until television came in and with it the disappointment that things on the other side of the globe are in fact just like over here. Or almost so.A few days back I saw photos taken by my friend Anton Fiala and everything is again different. They left me speechless, but especially without a sense of time. Allegedly, it took millions of years for the natural formations that charmed me at first sight to evolve. I was literally stunned by the granite wave, growing for thousands of years in height in order that water flowing down its flanks would later add to it a red-greyish glow. Scholars have allegedly estimated its age at two million seven hundred thousand years. A respectable age, indeed. And Fiala, too, deserves recognition for the way he has photographed it. And not solely this miracle in stone.An impressive feature in his Australian collection is his brilliant coping with manifold natural motives. Some may object: Easy work, as they stand still! What an error. I recalled Prof. Karol Plicka’s words: when asked why so few photographers take pictures of architecture, he replied quite simply, yet truthfully: They can’t photograph a house! Were we to paraphrase this statement, we could say that one has to be capable of photographing also rocks, hills, rivers, trees. Fiala masterfully puts a great whole and a great detail into a counterpoint. He succeeds in finely setting it off with a delicate light stitch (I beg pardon of linguistic purists, but this term best expresses what I intend to say). Perhaps flash, or beam might correspond to it. Even when on the road, Fiala slackens in nothing, he takes pictures of the landscape using a tripod which permits him to play with exposure times. He is not satisfied with a current tourist view, doesn’t spare his steps to find the right spot. His pictures are no trite recording of what he sees, they immediately take on several planes, literally drawing in the viewer into the scenery. In viewing the collection you will have no dull moment, for all the time something is going on in the various pictures.Fiala has taken pictures of a landscape on the antipodes in which, however, nothing stands on its head. From a country formed by millions of years, he has brought a „millionfold testimony“. It’s long since I saw such inventive photographs obtained through such honest drudgery. „Hats off to you, Master!“ MARIÁN PAUER |