Prague - Slovak-born photographer Robert Vano does not take pictures just of male nudes. The Platinum Collection, his latest exhibition in Prague, proves that Vano is a skillful photographer who likes shapes and shadows above all, with a touch of melancholy.
The retrospective exhibition, the biggest to date, has been organized by the Leica Gallery and reviews 40 years of Vano's career.
Focus on boys
Robert Vano was born in 1948 in Nové Zámky, Slovakia. In 1967 at the age 19, he emigrated through 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, Nadír and many more.
In 1984, he began working as an independent photographer in New York, Paris and Milan. At that time Vano was advised by another photographer to focus on topics he likes best.
„He said, you should do something that's your story, inside, and I didn't know what's my story. He told me, you like boys, why don't you take pictures of boys? I didn't…not that I would be ashamed, but I never thought of taking pictures of men because there was no market for that - it was like taking pictures of zebras or something," he told Czech public service radio.
Soon his work appeared in magazines including Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan and others and gradually won acclaim around the world.
Bodies from Chernobyl
When asked what has changed in the past forty years in his style of taking pictures, Vano would insist his style "remains quite the same". But something did change, according to Vano.
"Maybe some things have changed more with the body. In the pictures I have of naked men I have from 40 years ago they were all hairy, but now they all shave and they look like the children after Chernobyl," Vano said in an interview for Czech radio public service.
"That's what my mom said, oh, these boys look so funny. I said, mom, why? She said they don't have any hair, they must be from Chernobyl. I said, no mom, they shave," he added, laughing.
The exhibition features over 200 pictures and some of them are for sale. They will be on display in Mánes Gallery until September 9.
