“As a small boy, I had a favorite book: ’There Beyond the River, Argentina Lies.’ It was huge and full of strange, even scary photographs. I spent a lot of time with that book. In a small village at my grandparents house, where I spent a good part of my childhood, I fell in love with the country in the book. Now I know why – it attracted me like the beauty of a woman who already knows what love is. The pictures from this great book faded from my mind over time and I nearly forgot about that country of dreams, but I recalled them not long ago, when I found out about an IPRN grant and the opportunity to travel to Brazil…” Andrej Balco

CARTOGRAPHY OF AN INVISIBLE WORLD

Andrej Balco came from Slovakia in 2007 to photograph domestic servants in their daily life in Brazil. His focus, far from being free, is connected to issues of his production – he has photographed Ukrainian laborers who constitute an invisible work force in his country. Coherently, in our cultural universe Balco also exhibits his political posture as traveling-artist. He ponders over the invisibility of certain professions, from a private dimension, such as he has done in the Slovak environment, but this time turned to interpersonal relationships between bosses and servants in the Brazilian social context. More than a document, the conceptual approach of the artist himself is a form to create knowledge. It differs from a passive contemplative attitude as described by Baktin, to “a second world, to a life outside authority”. 1 It is an ascending flight towards all forgotten stories.