CGD

When the young Prague-based photographer of Belarusian origin Iryna Drahun was asked to describe her work for the fashion magazine Novy Zine, she said that the only thing left after physical reality has moved into the virtual world is to navigate between the two. However, this movement is not unidirectional because the virtual world influences the physical reality and makes it often impossible to distinguish one from the other, as revealed also in the genre-specific photographs by Iryna Drahun. Although she posts snapshots she captured on one of her Instagram profiles; these, despite often not fitting many social norms, could equally be used for her photo editorials. If a woman cutting her hair on the subway or a man in tights shouting into a mobile phone seem a bit out of place, the same would be perfectly normal in photographs of performances by artist and stylist Lukáš Hofmann or the collective DJ-dance troupe The Melancholy of Marissa Cooper, for example. And conversely, portraits of the singer-songwriter from the project Dým and of two musicians from the band Terror Phoenix, who together with other musicians form the Prague-based label Sing Sing Soundsystem, taken in a limestone quarry are stylized as informal snapshots. Yet the location and small details such as ruined or mud-stained clothes blur the boundaries between the real and the unreal, without Iryna Drahun having to use the 3D graphics that she used to enhance physical reality in the past.

Karel Císař