Biography
Michal Korta was born in Poland and studied German philology and photography. He has been working in photography for more than 15 years. Korta works with press, advertising agencies and international cultural institutions. He is a lecturer on photography in Poland and Switzerland.
The main topics his work explores in his personal projects are identity, identifications and coincidences. His most important projects are: Former Russian Republics (2006), Kazakh Dismounted (about former nomads in Uzbekistan, 2010), Balkan Playground (2014), Cranium Animalis (Animals from a Distance, 2015).
Portfolio
Balkan Playground
I’m looking for a new definition of modern Balkans. As the great photographers of the road, who
travelled across America and created a significant panorama of the US over the last 70 years, I travelled
across the United States of Balkans.
In the end of summer I hit the road without any
plans, any expectations or date of return. I travelled across 8 Balkan countries. I was travelling by car,
as slowly as I could. I slept in the car, I put myself in photography mood.
My mind was one-eye
input machine. I sometimes step behind the shadow line and observe the reality. I created the series that
shows people and places in that specific time in universal way.
"The Balkans are a
cultural-historical and temporal palimpsest. Everyday life in the Balkans is played out on the pages of that
palimpsest and according to its principles. The people of the Balkans live in many civilizations and
timelines simultaneously – though of course they are not aware of this. The layers of Balkan history, its
different identities, timelines, and civilizational models, have for centuries have fascinated those who
have travelled through the Balkans but are not from the Balkans, because they can see a dual, quadruple,
heptuple image that is not visible to people from the Balkans, who understand it instinctively, but know no
other image of the world." Miljenko Jergović
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