The architect will design the house so that it is perfect from his point of view. However, over the years, his work is transformed, people fix non-functional elements and modify many things to their liking. For eleven years, the Slovak photographer carefully documented these transformations in one functionalist house in Bratislava, which was built in 1936 according to the design of the architect Alexander Skutecký.
Switch, tile, handle, socket, elevator call button. Ordinary details of houses and apartments that we see every day. They are firmly anchored in our consciousness, but we do not pay attention to them. We may not even be able to remember them exactly, but we certainly don’t think to photograph them.
Jana Šturdíková did this, focusing on the life of objects in an ordinary functionalist house in Bratislava, built in 1936. She mapped the historical and contemporary layers of architecture and home design. She went through the house from the boiler room to the lightning rod and looked for original elements in ten apartments as well. She observed how they changed, preserved or were replaced under the influence of use.
Photo author: Aktuálně.cz / Nakladatelství PositiF / With permission to use
Jana Šturdíková: HOUSE
The author of the photographs in the book is Jana Šturdíková, the authors of the texts are Denis Haberland, Tomáš Pospěch and Jana Šturdíková. Published by PositiF (2023), the book has 164 pages and contains 550 photographs. More on the publisher’s website: www. positif.cz. Pictures from the book can also be seen at the DOM exhibition in Prague Photo gallerieswhich will last until March 30
She also followed in detail how the history of the 20th and 21st centuries marked the house and what the fates of the architect and owners were. “The architect was of Jewish origin, he perished during the Slovak National Uprising. It is still unclear when and where. The owner was also of Jewish origin. She came from Vienna and received the house as a wedding gift from her parents. During the war, it was confiscated from her, after the war she got it back, after 1948 it was confiscated again and in the early 1990s she got it back again in restitution,” says Jana Šturdíková. All these changes somehow affected the shape of the building’s interior spaces and their equipment.
“Until recently, for example, a brass handle designed by the first director of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, was preserved. Interestingly, after 1933, these handles were no longer allowed to be made of brass, because after Hitler came to power, brass was only intended for weapons purposes. Handles were used less quality metals,” states Šturdíková. However, after the reconstruction of the house in 2021, the door and the handle disappeared.
The book Dom, which contains more than 550 pictures of Jana Šturdíková, was created in 2012 – depending on how the author managed to negotiate access to individual apartments. During that time, their owners changed, and the photographer documented some places several times to record their further transformations. The christening ceremony of the book took place on February 21st on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition of Jana Šturdíková’s photographs in Prague’s Fotografic gallery (the exhibition will last until March 30th).
Jana Šturdíková (*1983) studied dramaturgy at the VŠMU in Bratislava, photography at the VŠVU in Bratislava and the Institute of Creative Photography of the University of Silesia in Opava. She exhibited, for example, at the Month of Photography in Bratislava and the Mois de la Photo in Paris. Since 2015, she has been working for a long time on the extensive photographic project “Châteaux po nasom” about decaying castles in Slovakia, which was also published in the form of a successful photo book. Her latest project Dom is also published in the form of a comprehensive photographic publication. More information on the website www.janasturdikova.com.
