Abstract:

The article is based on a book and texts from Elena Lichá-Zábranská and deals with the lifetime work of the significant Slovak artist and photographer Ľuba Lauffová, who is considered as an extraordinary personality not only for Slovak, but also for European photography in general. She studied photography at the School of Applied Arts in Bratislava and in 1976 graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague as an exceptionally creative photographer. At first she worked at a primary art school in Bratislava and from 1983 as a freelance artist. Apart from creative work, she was concerned with illustrations of children’s books in particular. The year 1989 was marked by general feelings of cultural and personal depression. She eventually committed suicide on the 21st of March 2004. In her work, characteristic of avant-garde and inventive artistic vision, she challenged many stereotypes of Slovak art photography. Combining humour with poetry, and beauty with eroticism, her photography has affinities with Czech poeticism and the Slovak form of Surrealism. Ľuba Lauffová was never confined to pure forms of photography and always transformed her point of departure. She easily transferred to various forms of imaginative photography, masterfully exploiting collage, montage, light painting and staged photography. Lauffová completed her positives with painterly interventions, giving free rein to her intuition and associations. As an exceptional artist, Ľuba Lauffová created her own photographic poeticism and exploited a wide range of genres. Ľuba Lauffová had a close affinity with the postmodernist thinking of the early 1980s. Irrespective of the domestic social situation, she identified herself with European and world art development and through her staged photography embraced the principles of classic modernism in the development of Slovak photography, thus contributing to the frequency of photographs as works of art in 20th century Slovak fine art.

Key words:

Photography, Imaginative photography, Painting, Collage, Montage, Light paint- ing, Staged photography, Female body, Nude, Portrait, Self-portraits, Stereo- types, Poetry, Poeticism, Beauty, Eroticism Sensitive, Interior, Artistic, Surrealism, Avant-garde, Secret, Intuition, Associations, Aestheticism, Stylisations.