Petra Malá Miller
Markéta Kubačáková
Markéta Kubačáková: You studied photography at the Academy of Arts, Architecture
and Design in Prague and soon after your graduation you left to Canada. From your point
of view what are the differences between the Prague art scene and the local art scene
in Lethbridge?
Petra Malá Miller: The art community in Lethbridge is small compared to larger cultural
centres like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal; but it's surprisingly diverse. Contemporary
art is vital there and practiced at an advanced level.Artists are more or less in touch with
what's happening in Europe and around the world. For example, the university has an
outstanding visiting artists program that introduces artists, designers and architects from
across Canada and elsewhere to the community. The Southern Alberta Art Gallery is
located in Lethbridge and is one of Canada's leading venues for contemporary art. Today,
it is possible to live almost anywhere but remain connected with other communities like
those in Prague.
MK: Your work has a reflexively introspective character. The contents of your photographs
are often based on personal history, which you repeatedly reconstruct in different ways in
your images. How are you finding the distance from the subject that allows for this process
of reconstruction?
PMM: My images are not straight re-constructions but are formed from a process of reflection
and projection. My past meets my present and, in my work, becomes an image. I re-imagine
my past, my childhood memories, and bring those memories into the present through my
photographs. Memory establishes a link to the past. These connections help me construct
a narrative; my recollections are made in the present. The past, the present and the future
co-exist in my narrative. Photographing can create a distance between the subject depicted
and its presentation as a photograph. But photographs--as a kind of illusionary space--welcome
the viewer inside that space, to experience the illusion. So, with regards notions of time and
space, nearness and farness are presented in complex ways in my photographs.
MK: Your works do not force themselves on the viewer and yet involve the viewer’s imagination
intensively in a distinct type of poetics. In which ways are you trying to initiate the viewer’s
involvement into your world?
PMM: My world is partly your world, too. For example, we were all children. Also, the pictures
I make are not entirely fictions. They are both fact and fiction--the real and the imaginary meet
on the surface of the image.
Viewers project their own expectations, experiences and memories onto the image. These act
as filters that modify the viewer's perceptions or readings of the photographs I make. In this way,
viewers make my photographs their own. I want to create a space for the viewer where they can
connect to their own experiences and stories.
MK: From your images I often sense feelings of loss and an indication of helplessness–over
irreversible time, over what we wished for but could not express ourselves. What feelings
or questions concern you at the beginning of your work?
PMM: One can say that loss is at the centre of history. There is always something that gets
left out or cast aside from the stories we tell of ourselves, of the past and of history. In photography,
too, which is used to make records, something comes into view while something else is excluded
from view. In this way, loss is at the core of photography.
For me, it is important to realize that perceptions of the past are not fixed and that change is possible.
I look for opennings, spaces and opportunities, where positive change can take place. The past
cannot be changed but our relationship to the past can change. I do not feel helplessness in relation
to the past or to history. Rather, I feel that by understanding the past I can find a better way forward.
In this sense, I feel hopeful.
I find these unfixed spaces in my work which is about family, identity, childhood innocence,
adolescence, loss and desire, and the relationship between photography and personal memory.
Translated from Czech by Petra Malá Miller