Jiří Šigut: Práce - Works / 1985-2018

This major monograph devoted to the work of the Ostrava photographer Jiří Šigut maps his career from the early 1980s to the present day. Šigut’s photography does not primarily attempt to capture reality in objective situations or moods. Rather he exploits the visual potential of the experienced environment as material for structures in shapes and light, which are then experimentally processed using technology and drawing on the properties of the medium itself, transforming the original photograph into an autonomous abstract work of art. It is only the title of the photograph which reveals to us the place, time, situation or person from which the work was derived. In his analysis of the medium of photography, Šigut went as far as to eschew the use of a camera for two whole decades, instead relying solely on light and the emulsion of photographic material. He also incorporates elements of his own body into his works.