Peter Župník

ISBN: 978-80-7215-400-5|Published: 2010|Pages: 136
Binding: Softbound|Format: 160 x 180 mm|Graphic design: studio Najbrt

Peter Župník was born in Levoča, Slovakia, on 14 August 1961. From 1976 to 1980 he trained as a commercial photographer at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, Košice, Slovakia. He continued his training as a photographer at FAMU, Prague, graduating in 1986, and has worked as a freelance photographer since 1987. Also in the late 1980s he became a member of a group of artists called Most (Bridge, in English), and later became a member of the Prague House of Photography. In 1995 he moved to Paris, where he lives and works to this day. During the last five years, however, he has been spending more and more time, for both work and pleasure, in Levoča. Already during his years in Prague, Župník showed himself to be one of the most striking members of the “Slovak New Wave”, an informal group of young Slovak photographers training under Ján Šmok at FAMU. After some initial attempts at photojournalism Župník also became one of the first photographers in Czechoslovakia to make direct unstaged photography with subtly added painting. This work, in appearance and meaning, goes beyond the boundaries of reality. It is in the series Little Big Things (from the 1990s), in which he searches for hidden poetry by means of close-ups, short depth of field, and additional painting, that Župník expresses his fascination with small, apparently banal objects, and products of nature mostly strikingly. The introductory essay to the volume is by Lucia L. Fišerová (b. 1977), an art historian, freelance curator, and critic of photography.