PETR STRNAD

Education: Graphic School in Prague /printing technologies branch. Experiences: a photojournalist at the different Czech newspapers and magazines. Currently I live and work in London as a full time photographer.

I take photographs using old alternative technologies such as cyanotype or vandyke /Van Dyke brown/, classical black and white and digital techniques. I work also with an experimental possibilities in photography. The influencies of my works lie in places I have experienced.All my works are concerned with a nature and urban areas and reflect my deep interest in the environment. Photographs are characterized by strong abstract form and light. I am greatly inspired by the idea of time and change the contemporary urban surrounding in which I live. I explore the idea of urban decay in an industrial areas and neglect as source of beauty. My fascination lies also with the plain nature and their 'products' . Images express the pleasure their unique 'prowess' to present the secret of perfection for us. Exploring the memory, photograph comments the relationship between imagination and reality, between the internal and the external worlds and often raising upthe question - what is beneath or behind the surface? My work is more creative process and aesthetic beauty of the finished print and less about original subject in the space. A novelty in my alternative or digital prints is using a negative inversion for a more marked expression character the trivial objects and environment. My photographs are not about the other world, they are about our places in this world and this time. The last time I keep an interest in an experimental spheres. I discovered for me new possibilities of the photography. My goal was discovering to create an images by the way of cameraless process, only by using chemical solutions or raw chemicals directly into black and white or colour paper. That are 'fantastic trips', mainly because my hobby is a painting. That prints are records inspired by details an outside world, eg. industrial or urban environments with their wall, graves, streets etc. It is an independent method of an investigetion in the possibilities classical process in photography. This experimental artworks can to ask us to consider the question: What is a photograph, what is still a photography?

"Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality" - Henry Moore.

Exhibitions in the UK: 2005 London; The Truman Brewery /a part of London Photomonth/@@@ 2006 London; The Truman Brewery /a part of London Photomonth/@@@ 2007 London; Crouch End Open Studios /Art Experience Gallery/@ Crouch End Open Studios /RA School Gallery; together with Crouch End artists/@ Mile End /Art Pavilion;a part of London Photomonth/@ Southwark /Cafe Gallery; Christmas Fair/@@@ 2008 London; Crouch End Open Studios@ Chelsea /Untitled Artists Fair/ @ Royal Academy Summer Exhibition@ Canterbury; Canterbury Art Fair /The University for the Creative Arts/@ Bristol; Royal West of England Academy Autumn Exhibition@@@ 2009 London; Crouch End Open Studios