The Attention Seeker . . . by Peter Howe . . .

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0505/the-attention-seeker.html

Antonin Kratochvil wants your attention, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the planet on which we live. His latest book, Vanishing, published by de.MO, is his most recent attempt to get you to pay attention to the issues to which he has dedicated much of the last 16 years of his life and career. The items whose rapid disappearance disturbs him include forests, wildlife, indigenous cultures and social structures, and even the civil liberties of the citizens of the United States. As a photographer he believes that it is his job to go and photograph "things people usually don't see, or things I think they should see."

Kratochvil was born and brought up in Czechoslovakia and arrived in America in 1972 after fleeing his native land's repressive communist regime. Much of the way he looks at the world and the issues that he finds important are as a direct result of growing up the citizen of a police state, and it was in 1989, while covering the Czech Velvet Revolution, that he came across the theme that he has passionately followed since then. Feeling burned out from covering the rapidly unfolding events in Prague he decided to take a day off and revisit the mountains in northern Bohemia where his parents took him as a child. He recalls, "I went up there and there were no trees and yet I remembered as a kid all these incredible trees, huge, 100-year-old trees, and there was nothing left. All you could see were the buildings sticking out, and I was really shocked. It was all because of the pollution, the acid rain, that destroyed the area, that region, and it really shook me. I said, 'I'd better start paying attention, and people should start paying attention.'"

Antonin's attention span is wide, and he attacks the issues of environmentalism and social disruption on a global scale. His travels have taken him from Guyana to Chernobyl, Louisiana to the Caspian Sea, from the Congo to Azerbaijan, and he doesn't shy away from taking a controversial stance on many of the sights that he has witnessed. In Zimbabwe he takes a sympathetic approach to the plight of the white tobacco farmers who lived under a reign of terror for many years and lost lands that in some cases had been in their families for 300 years.

"I'm not politically correct," he explains, "I pride myself on not being politically correct and not shying away from issues. I was there, I photographed it, and it was very dangerous at the time because they tried to kill white journalists. In a way I felt for these guys because a lot of them were not really that rich but just renting the farms. Zimbabwe hasn't profited from (the) elimination of the white farmer because it ruined the economy and as a result a lot of people (are) paying the price. There are all kinds of different vanishings, and this was one of them. I'm not making any judgment, good or bad; it's just a fact."

- more . . .

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0505/the-attention-seeker.html

- photo gallery . . .

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0505/vanishing_thumbs.html