Miró von Laugaricio

Photography has always been a part of his life. He started capturing images more than 30 years ago. Miró is a graduate from the Photography Department of the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). He is a freelance photographer living in Austria. He is engaged in abstract photography, scenic photography, portrait photography, design and business graphic and commercial photography. Miró von Laugaricio is a photographer with Czechoslovakian roots who lives in Vienna. He was born in 1970 in Trencin. His love for photography goes back to his childhood, when he was only ten years old and created his first photographs. His initial idea of "writing with the light" gradually became a real passion. Already this first published and exhibited photos show the photographic vision and his technical precision with its typical peculiarity and sensitivity. At the age of 17 he published his photos on the front pages of the photographic magazines Vytvarnictvo-fografia-film, Ceskoslovenska fotografie and Revue fotografie. During his studies at the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague at the Institute of Artistic Photography, he clarified and "defined" his own view of the world. He made poetic and dreamy shots full of emotional tension and with the beauty of a baroque pathos. His profound education, but above all his indisputable photographic talent, led him to that admirable depth of 'his' view of things that is 'palpable' in each of his photographs. None of his photographs seems artificial, on the contrary, they are the expression of a contemporary artist of photography. "For someone to make high-quality pictures, he does not always have to have a perfect background and three assistants, first and foremost he needs the talent and love of the craft of photography." MvL Anyone who wants to survive in the field of photography must be a creative artist and a master craftsman who knows all the finer points of his trade. Miró von Laugaracio never succumbed to the "technicism" of those who constantly have to buy new "equipment" to create new interesting pictures. Intuitively, he always looks for new photo opportunities and grows with each new shot. Diversity in photography - that's what Miró von Laugaricio wants to portray. His diversity is born of 'honest practice', unique vision, artistic feeling and technical brilliance. One can say: Miró found his own >photographic expression<. Everything that happens around him, what he sees around him, he uses in his creative intentions and pictures. The selected photos reveal not only the fabric variety, but also his creative continuity and individuality of the view. The exhibited pictures are only a fraction of his many years of activity. However, they clearly show that the photographic process, its instrumental composition and the techniques used were a means of capturing the visible projection of reality. For every single shot turns to the viewer, opens his eyes and announces its right to a place in the sphere of aesthetics. For this photographer, the meditative depth of the sinking and the discovering looks are characteristic. That's why he always surprises with something new. His photographic work is not only rich in diversity, but above all in inner values. As if his photographs not only reflect, but live their own dramas - because they are above all a subjective statement about the emotional world of the artist. They are in this sense concentrated poetry. And all this he achieves in almost complete unity of content and form. He ingeniously uses formative means with the intention to increase the final effect. He has a sense for the detail and the monumentality, but also for the fragility, which he mixes astutely in his work with the crude and gross. The pictorial stylization is reflected in the whole work of the artist. With the help of location and angle of the photographs, the design of the motifs in several spatial plans, the use of the character of light and atmospheric situation, he creates a completely new stylistic work of photography. He accentuates graphic elements to the exclusion of all disturbing, achieving an admirable compositional purity. His work is in the field of stylization and abstraction. He always uses a well thought-out conception, which is never contrived. Portrait shots In his already very extensive work, we also find the portrait shots. He has been creating portraits since the beginning of his career, working with the film studios Koliba in Bratislava, creating countless suggestive character portraits of actors and extras for the artistic agency Galaxy. He attaches a legitimate importance to working with the model. He is concerned with the expression, not only of external beauty, but of the true harmony of the whole human being. And then we see dreamy and tender melancholy blows from his portrait footage. Social documentary photography In Miró's documentary photographs, his attention is focused primarily on narration, often with a hint of moralizing and social criticism and a clearly subjective accent. The project, to which he devoted more than one and a half years, resulted in a comprehensive collection of photographs of people traveling by subway. The faces of these people tell of their life stories, their doubts, their ambivalences, their hopes and forgotten dreams. These are extraordinary shots of everyday people. In these pictures, he captures a period of time that has been taken out of everyday life. Using a flash shot, the artist here shows significant visual quality work. In tonality the pictures are full of contrasts, they do not avoid the detail and they have a dynamic structure in the diagonal. The photos are impressive and indeed solitary shots. But in their essence they are >Reportagegebilde<, so multi-image pictures. These photographs are also characterized on the formal side, above all, by an unconventional approach. Genre photography architecture Miró knows how to use the contrasts and thus can wrap deep thoughts into his pictures ( looks, details, great details of the architecture, facades, motion blur, colour aggression or vice versa perfect sharpness and subtle hues ). He creates images with not only "unknown" perspectives, but also unusual content, emotional and expressive power. The work with the optics of long focal length became the dominant of a whole series. Many photographs were taken during long walks through interesting landscapes of Bratislava and Vienna. He plays with the urban motifs - he works with lines, shapes, matter, perspective, tonality and deliberately uses the most diverse silhouettes. He tries to represent bizarre abbreviations, unusual motif connections and graphical solutions. He photographs without regard to whether the object of his interest has a grandiose historical value or whether it is a meaningless building. This collection represents a new approach to the photographic representation of the city. It does not want to be an entertaining picture guide nor a list of historical and architectural sights. He captures the face of a city with an unusual view and extraordinary perspectives. Miró wants to show how one can learn to see and decipher something seen a hundred times. Minimalism The genre of architecture overlaps with another genre in the work of this photographer, that of minimalism. Expressive means are: shape, colour, lines, texture, light ... The author surprises with a >discovery< of places and things, thus showing a unique photographic genius. He has the ability to discover details that others ignore. He >liberates< the detail from its surroundings where it loses itself and suddenly turns it into an object of interest. And so it gets its meaning! For Miró's image, the previous meaning of the detail or its insignificance is not important. He transfers his interest in detail, form, line, composition ... and thus creates a new content and a new meaning. Landscape In the rich genre palette of the author, we also find impressive and strange "seen" landscapes. The motif of the landscape we find already in the early epoch of his work. Miró von Laugaricio often goes to the mountains and forests, where he seeks the vestiges of time - the rain, the snow, the heat, the cold ... These traces can be found, for example reflected in a variety of tree formations. On this basis he created extensive picture cycles >Natural Traces of Time<. He is charmed by the quiet majesty of the forests, especially in the surroundings of Bratislava, but also intrigued by the enchanted corners of the arms of the Danube with their lush vegetation, in which it seems as if time has stood still. He is fascinated by bizarre forms of the centuries-old trees - this "lonely giant" - which he selects and "knows". Nature attracts him, - its thousandfold changes, its structure and its forms! He always returns to his motives. Patiently, he waits for the light effects of sunrise and sunset, for dramatic cloud groups with penetrating rays of light, for the casting of the first evening shadows. The landscape is not an immutable object for him, but a constantly changing image that is just as transient as the light. And so he can create an infinite number of mutually different variations of the same theme. He always discovers new motifs and uses both the sharp and the blurred colouring of a theme. At a high level, he constantly creates photographic images that are characterized by solid construction, compact compositional character, exemplary purity and a concisely expressed atmosphere. Each image radiates unrepeatable sensitivity and purity of style. This also shows the mastery of the author and his gift to penetrate into the deep structure of landscapes. In these landscape series he stylizes and changes the levels of the photographic reality. Both his seeing of the colours and the presentation of the new image are impressive. His statement about the landscape is extraordinary, suggestive and independent. The photographs are full of dramatic moods and emotions, they are a lyrical statement, a song of praise, and sometimes even a mystical worship of the natural beauties of the earth. They are photographic poetry. Creation in this genre is closely related to the author's interest in depicting detail: macro-photographic compositions of flowers, leaves, fruits, and other parts of the plants, in which the photographic emphasis on form and structure is reflected. They are details isolated from the environment, emphasizing the material arrangement. The pictures are absolutely sharp. They represent the texture of the surfaces of objects. Often they are arranged in human poses, so each shot becomes a play of admirable shapes. "The original idea takes a different form - after man has experienced it - man forgets - and the memory does not have to be quite true." MvL Surrealistic collages The latest part of his artistic work is a collection of surrealistic collages from Spain, Austria and Slovakia. In this exhibition we can see a selection of them. In the works, there is a connection between the abstraction, the sitter and a surreal estate. The postmodern way of expressing it sets society against nature. He creates imaginary landscapes and experiments with different sizes, materials, dimensions, perspectives, colours and themes ... Miró experiments with motifs of architecture, birds, flowers, butterflies, statues and relies on his own fantasies. The resulting collages are sensitively processed digitally. The fragments used are deliberately staged during the recording and completed with illustrations using vector graphics. They are combined with photographs taken by the author over the last twenty years. His fantastic natural gifts, his artistic skills and techniques, which he was taught by the artphotographer Prof. Milota Havrankova, lead him in his artistic activities. Let yourself be seduced by his artistic works ... into a world full of abstract dreams and visions and the freedom to see something very special ... "I try with a dramatic element, tragedy and melancholy, to achieve the effect of a consciously lingering pathos, which is why I come into permanent confrontations of meaning that result in reconciliation with chaos, allowing the viewer to be part of the creative dialogue between the past and present." MvL Text © copyright by: Slavo Sauer English translation: Mag. Gerlinde Pollak Photography © copyright by Miró von Laugaricio www.miroart.at All rights reserved