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About Igor Grossmann and His Photographs

The remarkable photographs of Igor Grossmann are an excellent example of the maxim "A picture is worth a thousand words." They are at once full of passion, tenderness, and wistful longing. They are uniquely Slovak yet, at the same time, they are a universal and oft-told tale of a bygone way of life - simpler and nobler - eroded by time, invaded by technology, and forgotten in the frantic pace of the modern world. As an individual loses his childhood, so a people lose their early way of life.

Dr. Grossmann captures the essence of the Slovak mountain village at the moment of encounter between the old and the new, when centuries of tradition beheld the dawn of a new age. The world of the mountain village springs to life in these starkly beautiful images: the countryside formed by traditional ways of farming, buildings blended into the scenery, and family life in its ordinariness and in its bright, festive moments.

Originally from Zilina in northwestern Slovakia, Igor Grossmann is uniquely qualified to capture the starkly beautiful images of the vanishing Slovak village life. His keen eye for the heart of folk life is the result of an intimate knowledge of the mountain villages where he worked as a pharmacist and indulged his inclination to view the world through a camera lens. In 1966 his career in pharmacy gave way to his passion for photography. Taking inspiration from the work of the Czech Jan Lukas, the Slovak Karol Kállay, and the Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson, Grossmann commenced his quest to document a cultural identity.

Sample the wonderfully evocative photographs from Dr. Grossmann's collection.

• About the Book Images Gone with Time
• Automatic Slide Show (56K or faster connection suggested)
• Manually Browse Images

These images have been selected from 120 photographs appearing in the forthcoming book Images Gone with Time: Slovak Folk Life in Photographs and Bilingual Text published by Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc.

Every month, we will add more Grossmann photos to the gallery. Please return often to visit and stop awhile at this wonderful site.

The Photographs will be part of major national exhibition in the United States scheduled for Summer 2000. Please e-mail the Foundation at info@slovakculture.org for more information about the exibitions.

Photos are available for loan under conditions specified by the Foundation.

The photographs are available as gifts for donations to the Slovak-American International Cultural Foundation.

Signed Photographs Available

We will be selling only 20 signed photographs of any one Grossmann image.
The purchase of such a photo is tied to a donation to the Foundation.

Following is the price list:

Number of Signed Photographs One Two

Donation $500 $700

Tax-Deductible Amount $375 $450

For a complete list of signed photographs, please visit the Grossman Catalog.

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