Kíra Krász

Kíra’s Thought After Taught is a body of work that articulates through multiple layers, giving life to an intriguing dialogue between intimacy, past memories and the idea of a geometry that connect us all.

PHOTO MEET & NORTHERN NARRATIVES discuss with photographer Kíra Krász about her artistic process and aims.

Kíra, “Thought after Taught” has been about two years in the making, can you please tell us how it all started and what is the process behind your wonderful work?

There were a very loose combination of events happening to me towards the end of the second year at the University. My heart was quite broken and I started looking for scientific reasons for how I felt. I went to some talks about neuroscience, listened to Alan Watts and read Susan Sontag to cure myself. A short while after that, I went to Paris Photo and I have seen snippets from Hungarian conceptual artists from the 1970’s. I felt a responsibility to reflect upon this national artistic tradition within my own work. This lead me to think about layering, the possibility to implement emotions as well as my thoughts into my photographic practice. Even to draw onto the images, to make a mark. When my great-grandmother died I went home for a visit to Hungary, which gave me the opportunity to have serious conversations with my brother, who is seven years younger. The photograph ‘The Length of the Spine ≠ the scale of experience’ was taken after one of those discussions. This piece marks the beginning for me, working in this way.  

It looks as if an invisible fabric of geometrical order envelops the world surrounding. How do you work out the matching between images and graphic elements? Are these images the result of pure casualty or do they come to life after a thoughtful process of trial and error?

At the start of Thought after Taught, I suppose I was trying to write my own science. The little additional drawings were my made-up measurements to use for the expression of each thought. The geometrical shapes joined in, after I realised how much I enjoy looking at equations, calculations simply because of their aesthetics. Picking up these old pages and exercise books I started seeing them in a different light, I did not need to understand it anymore and that was the ‘Afterschool’ beauty. 

I enjoyed, that completely irrelevant elements became relevant through the process. When positioned correctly, they had to work together, and that was fascinating to me. You might see some successful trials in this selection, the errors are more likely to be buried in my cupboards.  

The photograph of my collarbones was a late addition to the project. It was taken at that point where my eyes were already tuned into the process, the picture would be taken for the purpose to be printed upon geometry. The Hungarian writing translates as ‘Stress Ellipse’ which I found matching as the bones and body would be stressed when photographed. Stress, in this instance, is intended to reflect the physical tension of my body before the shutter was clicked.  

How did you come to get interested in photography?

My mother always told me that I was very observant as a child, seeing the world in pictures rather than in a continuous movement. I always found picture books more engaging than textbooks, and I would get very attached to them. I owned a free, ten-page nutrition catalogue taken home from a grocery store, displaying all types of food, which I would flick through every second day of the week. 

My grandma was the collector of everything dramatic and aesthetic: artificial flowers postcards, napkins, photographs and as I spent most of my time with her as a child, we would browse through these very often, analysing and discussing each of our observations. She was great at being a maniac – a lover of objects. I think that is where my love for photography is rooted, little pictures from the past. 

If I went round the family I have to say my dad is the most artistic, although he always denied it. He would hand the camera to me, with telling me not to drop it each and every time. When my brother was born, I would always have a model at hand. 

I was good at imagining and constructing, then photographing it for the sake of keeping the memory.

Did your academic experience change in any way your approach to the medium?

As the first year started, I was handed over a roll of film and told that the task was to shoot it, which I found a great introduction to film photography. That was the first change in my general practice, as I worked digitally before. I started to be more honest to my subjects, abandoning Photoshop more, allowing some abstraction, encouraging flares and errors in my work. I learned that deconstruction is visually the most exciting if you know the general rules of construction. 

This was the first place for me where I would be surrounded by artists, theorists and people in close connection to the photographic world. I am very grateful for the friends I gained through the years, and that forever encouraging and inspiring community. There were good thinkers, good visual artists, experimenters and good organisers between us, so there was always something to learn from the others. 

It took me a while to work out that the big brackets of ‘photographic genres’ as project requirements are very elastic, but as the last year was an Open Choice, I had no troubles with experimenting: First in the darkroom, then with the printers. 

Some of your prints remind us of experimental modernist art and some others seem influenced by contemporary practices such as the work by Broomberg & Chanarin. In any case, can you tell us more about which work inspires you most?

I have sadly missed my opportunity to see Broomberg & Chanarin’s work, in the form of an actual exhibition. I think someone like Katrin De Blauwer, Pereneczky Géza or Dóra Maurer had a big aesthetic impact on my work. The use of interesting papers only came after seeing some of their pieces hanging. 

Sally Mann was always the person who I felt the most drawn to, as in subject matter, material use and the process welcoming the errors. I like that ‘closeness to reality’ depicted on the pictures, the re-staged documentary and the involvement of her family. There are big surfaces of skin revealed as well as intimate landscapes and memory. She is not hiding anything, what is her life, is her photography. In terms of installation Cai Dongdong’s ‘Hang’ was a very delightful moment of connecting imagery and reality. He used a rope to hang the picture frame at one of it’s corners and the photograph in the frame would be of people pulling that rope from the other side.

I regularly look at paintings, I think that is my number one source of inspiration: I would highlight the work of Hieronymus Bosch or Paul Klee from the modern era.

Finally how did this lockdown impacted your work? Did you manage to find more time to concentrate or did you feel crippled by the current restrictions?

I did feel like I should have been more prepared at the start, but adapting to the changes I managed to make my room into a little studio: I was gifted a printer, so now I could start exploring some ideas I had saved up for a long time. We are fortunate with internet in our hands, as we can order things that we need. I have taken photographs at the start of the lockdown, now I am turning them into physical objects. Somehow it feels rewarding to have so much time for applications and for my work. It feels good, making the effort towards the future. If I do not think about my family back in Hungary, and about that distance that now is between us, I am fine.