Robert Vano , The Platinum Collection, Aug. 5 - Sept. 9, 2009

For its major exhibition project of the year, Leica Gallery Prague is renting the Mánes exhibition hall, where it will present more than 200 exceptional platinum photographs printed by the artist himself.

On the occasion of this exhibition, an expansive photography book is being published in Czech and English versions.

Leica Gallery Prague organizes one major exhibition every year outside its own exhibition space. Following last year’s successful exhibition in a tent on Wenceslas Square, which was visited by more than 160,000 people, this year the gallery has rented a classic exhibition hall.
Robert Vano’s hand-printed platinum photographs deserve a traditional exhibition space like the Mánes Gallery, one of Prague’s few large exhibition halls.
This large retrospective exhibition of more than 200 photographs is being held to mark the artist’s 60th birthday last year and spans the entire range of his work from 1968 through 2009.

“Never has it occurred to me that photographing is silly. On the contrary, I have the enormous luck that it is always fun for me, though I myself can’t say why. I always do it the same way, only I occasionally change the setting. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Robert Vano was born in 1948 in Nové Zámky, Slovakia. In 1967, when he was 19 years old and soon after graduation, he emigrated via Italy to the United States. He began working in New York as a hairstylist and make-up artist. He worked as an assistant to big-name fashion photographers including Horst P. Horst, Marco Glaviano, Catel, Fallai, Nadír and Malerbi. In 1984 he began working as an independent photographer in New York, Paris and Milan. His work appeared in magazines including Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan and others.
Aside from numerous solo exhibitions, he has also participated in group shows. In 2008 a book-length interview by David Hrbek was published under the title Sometimes Paradise. Today he works at the modeling agency Czechoslovak Models.
This exhibition received support from: JC Decaux, UniCredit Bank, UNIPRINT, BOOM TISK, Eclipse, M.I.P., Canon, Nadace ÈFU, /3.dílna/, TV Nova, tn.cz, Hospodáøské noviny, DIGIfoto
Text for the book The Platinum Collection: Robert Vano is a photographer who differs greatly from the experimental contemporary photographers who, with the aid of the latest technology, enthusiastically are trying to change the face of art photography. As director of the Leica Gallery, I am perhaps slightly conservative. At the risk of being called a mesozoic fossil, I stubbornly spurn inkjet and pigment prints; I am not won over by the triumphantly presented tests scientifically demonstrating that they will last my entire lifetime. In other words, for timeless values one lifetime is not long enough, and it is exactly through this extension that the value of art is affirmed.

With his use of the platinum printing technique, Robert Vano returns to photography’s roots and allows his photographs to work their magic through light. Platinum prints are popular with investors and collectors thanks to their wide tonal range, surface quality, and especially their long lifespan. The precious metal produces an unparalleled beauty through its span of tones, from warm black through reddish to brown, which is unattainable in gelatin silver prints. Platinum printing is not only beautiful, but it is also is among the most permanent of all photographic processes. The platinum group metals (platinum and palladium) are more stable than gold, and it is estimated that a properly made platinum print will last thousands of years.

Robert Vano became renowned locally mainly for his male nudes. However, he is also a highly professional fashion photographer, and his output includes portraits, floral still lifes, landscapes and nudes. Such rich variety makes it difficult, indeed impossible, to unequivocally categorize his work. No pigeonhole could contain him. For me, however, it is important that a photographer have a clear “signature style,” and with Robert Vano it is obvious that all his images were seen by the same eye, belong to the same family, emerge from a unique attitude, all built on far more than just perfectly crafted work.
His retrospective exhibition of two hundred platinum photographs forms the basis for this book. Every single photograph was made using the time-consuming platinum technique. The painstaking care with which Robert Vano creates his photographs and also the excellent cooperation in preparation for this exhibition convinced me that photography is his life’s fulfillment.
Robert Vano is a rare photographer these days — one who doesn’t rush and who derives pleasure from each and every one of his pictures, plays with them, breathes glamour into them, and then manages to share his joy with us, the viewers.
Jana Bömer
Gallery director