Photographic documentation of the shop windows of the main shopping street in the city during 30 years.
more... The Obchodna project is in many respects a unique undertaking. There are probably very few photographic series of similar size that would expose such a serious topic and which would have made do with such a minimum of stylistic means. The project through the photos of shop windows at main street in capital of Slovakia - Bratislava presents the sociol-political changes in the era of globalization of not only at Obchodna street, but Bratislava, as well as Slovakia and the whole post-communist world of the past thirty years.
For a long period of time Ľubo systematically recorded front facades and shop windows, he noticed various manifestations of a so called annual calendar, in which the key events or focal points of the communist system were celebrated – from the Great October Socialist Revolution to the February Victory... After the partial extinction of the communist veterans in the Politburo of the Soviet Union (their funeral portraits regularly appeared in the shop windows) came the era of Gorbachev´s glasnost and perestroika. Events at the end of 1989 brought changes in the content of shop windows, which became the scene of something akin to political graffiti – the first signs of an emerging open society. Under the market economy, commercial“normalization” was expressed through the appearance of shops and shop windows.
Ľubo Stacho collected the material for a long time, but the time lapse categorisation and organisation by his wife Monika was managed by utilising digital technologies. This photographic series of Obchodna street, which was built over a thirty year period, is a graphic demonstration of how important it is to clearly formulate a documentary project. With a minimum of ductile resources – and with the help of almighty time – it is possible to achieve maximum effect.