REVIEWS

ROBERT HUTINSKI - Elementary Particles

Photos by Robert Hutinski are this time quite different from those that we have been accustomed to. The fact is already talking about his transformation, amending shooting mode, which is more than that. Surely it is also a shift in himself; the change is not only in the photos, the change is also in the photographer. And it is not unimportant what is this change all about, because we can easily conclude from the photos what is going on in the photographer himself; the photos are always about himself even though he is not in the picture. We could take a risk and say at the outset that the shift is understandable if we exactly consider the images of the people who are monitored in the series Elementary Particles. The very title of the series is obviously taken from the world of quantum physics, so we could expect photos, such as those that the physicists offer us to watch them. We get something completely different, which is much better since the task of the artist is not to imitate reality. On the photos we see primarily the people. We see individuals in the natural environment. The basic idea of the photographer is therefore very simple and effective: there are always people around us and there is always the natural environment, but the people are most important. Truly, for every man are the most important other people, not nature. The relationships between individuals and the natural environment are thus special. The photographer is obviously aware that the people do not belong to the nature, that there exists an abyss between nature and human beings and that the latter are not natural beings since long time ago. We as human beings cannot live in nature and the Nature does not exist. That is the basic message of Robert's series. Human beings are symbolic creatures and we are the only species of animals that can create new environments in which we would like to live. The series Elementary particles is that kind of photos that testifies for that recognition, and it is thinking about it. The photos by Robert are always such that they urge us to think, because he is the photographer, who also thinks and not only presses the trigger. Hence, we certainly do not look at his photos and we are not satisfied by assessment or asking whether they are beautiful or not, whether they are technically appropriate or not. Such questioning is not pertinent for Robert's photos, and this recognition is at the same time also a characteristic of any good photographer. For his photography is much more important that the photos themselves are aware of the ideas or concepts, that they think about the consciousness or the spirit in which they are created, about the mind where we can read them, about the field which they change and transform. We thus read Robert's pictures, not just look. Just watching is anyway not enough to understand the images. There would be no images if people wouldn’t use language, if they wouldn’t talk, if they wouldn’t construct new symbolic worlds in which they can think. For each image, created by the photographer, it is therefore necessary to first have an idea. And without good ideas there are no good pictures, if I can paraphrase what was once said Kurosawa for a movie. From the pictures it is also evident that the photographer delves into human nature and thinks about it, which means that it is not true that he only detects it as if it existed before his arrival. Nature, in which people exist, is therefore a metaphor. It is not a depiction of nature, because the nature, radically speaking, isn’t important. The nature is there as a metaphor. Robert's photos use it and depict it, and this is something very difficult to make it in a convincing way. Robert's photographs are convincing. A shift in the photographer’s understanding of the picture is thus directly related to the shift in his understanding of the people and of himself. This shift is really great and complex. The tension between man and nature is thus featured in a special and very interesting way. Photos are in fact made as collages and this fact is immediately apparent. No human being is in a natural environment and it is merely implied that he is there, because he obviously does not belong there. It would be misleading, therefore, to think that the photographer portrays people in brightly colored natural environments. People in the series Elementary particles are literally mechanically placed in the natural environment, which could be anyone. You can transfer every human being from the series to any other natural environment of the same or of any other series. All this talk about the universality of human beings and their abilities to live in any environment, adapt to it and also survive in it. The essence of the people is therefore invisible to the eye. Their abilities to create different worlds in which they can feel like they are at home, is universal, which means that every human being is potentially a resident of any world. He is exactly what we see in the famous Odyssey 2001 directed by great Stanley Kubrick: a star child. Robert has therefore created a series of photographs, which discusses its own title: elementary particles. The elementary particle is only the invisible ability of human beings to be creative. This ability is of course invisible, intangible, but the photographer skillfully shows it by hinting to it; this gesture is necessary because human beings can’t be simply exposed to a natural environment by a photographer, if they don’ have the creative ability to create a new one. Creative ability, of course, also belongs to the photographer himself, so he himself is a part of the same series. Hence, he is a part of what he creates, even though he isn’t there on any photo. Robert Hutinski is an inhabitant of the same series, of the same multiplicity which can’t be closed because it is infinite.

Dušan Rutar