Review "Images Gone with Time"
Images Gone with Time
Photographic Reflections of Slovak Folk Life: 1950-1965
by photographer Igor Grossmann
There’s something about photographs that transport you to a time and place, far away from where you are at present. In my imagination, I sometimes think about what village life would have been like, years ago in Europe. I’d think about the idea that if I lived in village of long ago, I’d probably know a great deal about farming and animal husbandry, I’d know things such as how to make cloth, sew, and embroider clothes, and I would enjoy being part of a tight-knit community where we celebrated religion and cultural traditions together.
The collection of photographs by Igor Grossmann in his book Images Gone with Time is a tribute to a style of living that has all but disappeared: rural village life before it was touched by modernity. Images Gone with Time illustrates a variety of activities such as farmers working the soil and collecting by hand, women doing the washing in a cold creek, and people dressed in folk clothing and participating in community events such as a holiday or funeral. The photographs were taken by Mr. Grossmann from the 1950s to mid 1960s, mostly from villages around Žilina, the area that Mr. Grossmann grew up.
But how could it be that traditional rural village life was still prevalent in Slovakia in the mid-twentieth century? Slovakia, as many other communist countries, went through a period of rapid, and sometimes forceful, industrialization after World War II, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Industrial areas were mostly concentrated in larger towns and cities, which meant that many people were moving from rural to urban areas for work. In predominantly agrarian societies such as Slovakia before 1918, and to some extent even before World War II, this industrialization had a major impact on urban development.
Because of impending rapid industrialization, Mr. Grossmann’s photographs are all the more poignant; they showcase a way of life that would soon begin to die out. His photographs capture scenes with vivid detail that you could study endlessly. I’ve been known to do just that, imagining what life was like in a village in Central Europe. I had already known that life would have been much more difficult than the life I live today, but from Mr. Grossmann’s pictures, I realized that the concepts of roots, community, tradition, and values were of such significance that they would have been almost tangible. That’s something I would have liked to experience fully.
Though we may be saddened that images depicted by Mr. Grossmann are “gone with time”, through my own experiences of living in Slovakia for five years, I’m glad to see that the spirit of many elements of rural life, such as the active participation in folk culture, the observance of religion, and strong ties to nature, still can be felt in many places in Slovakia today.
Images Gone with Time is available through Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. www.bolchazy.com
