Cameras 1968

Jirí Balcar made this print, Cameras, with etching, and aquatint, those intaglio printmaking techniques, wow! I just love to imagine the artist in the studio with the acid fumes, bitten plates, and heavy press. The texture here is so rich, almost like a gritty film still. There are these ghostly figures, faceless, in what seems like an exhibition or gathering. Above them, floating like thought bubbles, are these old-timey cameras. What were they looking at? What did they see? I can feel Balcar's hand in the way he scratched and scraped into the plate, layering tone on tone to create atmosphere and depth, as if he’s excavating the image from some forgotten memory. It makes me think about other artists who wrestled with similar themes of memory and identity, like Christian Boltanski, who also dealt with haunting imagery and fragments of the past. But here Balcar has his own language, his own vocabulary, and accent. Each one of these marks holds a story.