Continuing with the theme of Photo-manipulation, I recently came across the work of Ivars Gravlejs.
Everyday from photo editors and journalists I got several assignments to photograph events around Prague. Before sending photographs to the newspaper's Photobank I quickly manipulated them in Photoshop. Originally idea was to change some little, unimportant details where the manipulation wouldn't change much the content of the photograph, for example, adding some more buttons on writer's Zdenek Mahler T-shirt or painting inscription - „Cunt“ on the brick wall. Although during the process it happened to make some more radical ones, for example, creating a traffic jam on the highway or cutting of singer's José Carreras finger. The aim of this project was to make an absurd, nonsense manipulation over the media manipulations.' Ivars Gravlejs
'This manipulation I did in a few minutes - I erased a hand of another singer and Carrera's finger, because in a photojournalism "the cut off a hand" is a mistake.'
'Here on the foreigners T-shirt I wrote "SMRT" (DEATH). It's my message to police.'
'On the 31st of August I had to photograph the traffic jam. I came to the place, but there was no jam. To get the picture I had a possiblity to throw a brick on the highway or to choose the less painful way - to go home and make the photo in peace. (The most crucial issues for the newspaper "Denik" are traffic jams, dirty streets and parks, homeless, foreigners and the weather.)'
'Gravlejs project is a typical example of so called „Subversive Art“. Art which is parasitic on the concrete subject and affects this subject (in this case media society), undermines and criticizes it. On the one hand Ivars Gravlejs deconstructs authority of medial business, deconstructs authenticity and objectivity of information (in any way medialized and interpreted), but on the other hand Gravlejs contemplates about circumstances of contemporary artist, who often has to suspend his/her creative process in order to earn money for living. Gravlejs carefully „smuggled“ his art in his everyday „Non-Art“ activity.' Milan Mikuláštík
