January | February 2006 - Boston Photography Focus

ook review | 7
[VANISHING]
Millbrook: de.MO, 2005
233 pages. Hardback.
ISBN: 0-9705768-3-8. $54.00
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL CHRISTIANO,
PRC EDUCATION COORDINATOR
Vanishing represents a life’s work of Antonin
Kratochvil’s and includes 16 powerful photoessays
compiled over two decades. The images
in the essays suggest the devastating effect
humanity has had on its environment and on
its own kind. It presents a world where people
and places are poised on the verge of extinction.
Included are images of cyanide gold
mining in Guyana, war-torn Beirut, poaching
and the black market trade in Congo,
the effects of chemical waste in Louisiana, oil
spills in the Ecuadorian jungle, Chernobyl,
the Angolan diamond trade that funded the
nation’s bloody civil war, the killing fields in
Cambodia, and Iraq, among others.
Kratochvil presents the human subjects of his
photographs with a genuine sense of empathy
and understanding. His sensibilities seem
attuned to their plight and were probably
honed through his own childhood experiences,
having been raised under totalitarian
rule in Czechoslovakia.
Antonin Kratochvil, Poisoned Earth, Mahdia, 2004
The black and white images presented in
Vanishing are stark and compelling. Kratochvil
alternates vast land and cityscapes with intimate
portraits, thus capturing the breadth of
afflicted environments as well as the vulnerability
of individual lives. This variation in perspective
is especially clear in Birds-Eye-View,
an aerial view of the Dow plant in Louisiana’s
“Cancer Alley,” when compared to Poachers, a
portrait of three poachers taken in the Congo.
While the first image presents the magnitude
of the situation, Poachers presents the explicit
humanity of people who have violated the
sanctity of their local flora and fauna.
Michael Persson’s poetic essays deftly connect
the images in the book. Persson and Kratochvil
have collaborated previously and the cohesiveness
of their respective contributions demonstrates
a familiarity with each other’s work.
Persson skillfully weaves together historical
information, first person narrative from those
involved, official documentation, metaphor
and vivid literary imagery to provide a context
for Kratochvil’s images. Persson’s words make
palpable the desolation and desperation felt
by many of the subjects as evidenced in the
following stanza from bohemia_the memories of
things lost:
A fine rain falls and the afternoon, like the
town, is grey.
It’s grey in the sky,
grey on the ground,
grey in the faces of the people here.
When set against Persson’s description
Kratochvil’s image of Bohemians Watching
Demolition, a scene depicting passers-by casually
taking in the destruction of a building,
possesses an even deeper psychological profile.
The dusty mist that shrouds the proceedings
seems to reflect the inner turmoil of the Bohemian
people who have seen the past glory of
their nation faded, crumbled, like the building
before them.
As stated in the opening essay “This body of
work offers nothing in the way of answers,
neither is it a sermon in hopes of brighter
days.” The hope of this book comes in exposing
the plight of those afflicted, both human
and environment, which are inextricably connected,
to the world. It suggests a hope that
awareness will bring to the fore a desire to act.
The only remaining question is will humanity
heed the call.
KRATOCHVIL LECTURES AT THE PRC ON FEBRUARY 16TH. TURN TO PAGE 6 FOR DETAILS.