Karol Plicka

Karol Plicka was a Slovak ethnographer, collector of folk songs, photographer, director, scenographer and cameraman. This monography maps in detail the life and work of this incredible, but at the same time, almost forgotten personality. The book contains rich material showing how Slovakia was depicted in Plicka’s photographs and films. The publication is full of Plicka’s personal photographs, photographs of the artist whilst working, the correspondence, manuscripts, musical notations, memoirs of his relatives and photographs from the Plicka’s family album. Karol Plicka died in 1987 in Prague, Czech Republic, and left us with a rich body of work – 40,000 musical notations of folk songs, thousands of negatives from Slovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria and the United States, four full-length films and a few short films, tens of picture publications.

Marian Pauer, PhDr. (born on the 20th of September 1945), is a graduate of the Department of Journalism at the Philosofical Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava where he gained his Doctorate of Philosophy. He has devoted more than four decades to professional photography as a historian, a theorist, and author of 31 publications, a curator of exhibitions and a member of juries for international exhibitions and salons in Slovakia and abroad. Since 1997, he has been an official delegate of the Slovak Republic to the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP), a member of the Slovak Photographer Association (ZSF), the Slovak Writers Society and Nonfiction Club of Association of Slovak Writers. He is a Laureate of Egon Erwin Kisch Award for a bookThe Beatles Photographer published in 2000. Medailist of Jozef Maximilian Petzval Medal 1991, holder of Gold Badge of the Slovak Photographers Association 1995. In 2003, he received the title Author of the Slovak Photographers Association. In 2005, he was given the title ESFIAP – Excellence FIAP by the International Federation of Photographic Art in Paris. In 2012 he was awarded by the Prize of Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic for his eminent acquisition to history nad theory of photography in Slovak and international context. From 1968 to 2015, he prepared and managed more than 250 one-man and collective exhibitions of photography and art in Slovakia and abroad (Austria, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rusia, Sweden and U.S.A.). He has prepared twelve multimedia projects on significant personalities. Four of them he created as a part of project Henkel Slovensko to Slovakia: about Dezo Hoffmann – The Beatles Photographer, sculptor Arthur Fleischmann, who created a Crystal Crown for Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II., photographer Andrej Reiser, founder of the Bilderberg Agency in Hamburg (Germany), Martin Trenkler - representative of a young generation, the first official Slovak photographer in Formula 1. In 2004, he invited to Slovakia the last man on the Moon, American astonaut rooted to Slovakia, Eugene Andrew Cernan and presented him by a multimedia project MAN ON THE MOON. In Budapest and London he presented a project Two Poles of Image about holography and photography. In cooperation with Slovak National Museum he prepared a project Obrazopis sveta as seen by lens of general Milan Rastislav ?tefanik, astronomer, diplomat and photographer. Finally in 2006 he prepared an exhibition and a yearbook of 13 contemporary Slovak photographers called PHOTO SK which has been also presented in China one year later.