• Richard Vanek

• born 1967 in CzechoSlovakia to Slovak parents
• in 1999 moved with family to The Netherlands
• from 2000 producing Carbon Pigment prints
• from 2001 selling his work on internet
• from 2007 using digital capture
• Expositions & Publications
• Contact him by  leaving comment

Richard Vanek is a photographic artists who challenge a mood of a observer by creating emotional photographs. He is self thought image creator who first used camera to capture his childhood feeling back in eighties. From that time his speciality stayed with constructing emotive imaginary in attempt to recreate moods.

From his early more documentary like work he move to more emotive style after he relocates with whole family to The Netherlands. Shortly after that he switch from darkroom printing to full digital printing with use of carbon pigment technique and start selling his prints on internet. He completed move to digital world by switching to full digital capture in 2007.

Richard has published photography books and is published in many magazines and over the internet and  he is recognized authority on black and white photography and archival digital pointing. As author of the Visual Emotion podcast in Apple iTunes he is as well active in social media world using Facebook and Twitter.

Richard’s inspiration is mainly personal live and the world of thoughts.He  is not actively looking for inspiration in other photographer’s work, while he admire work of Jozef Sudek, Taras Kuschinski or Susan Burnstine, more he is interested in books, thoughts and discussion to challenge his view on world. He admires Allan Watt and many creative people.

For creative person as Richard the tools and not very important. He put the most value in final finished product by which he not only explain his view, but allows the same to observers.

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What you find in Richard’s pictures: imagination and curiosity about what can be done with a camera, are of course present in the person himself. Otherwise how could these qualities have surfaced in his pictures? You take a picture of something and at the same time that something takes a picture of you. And what it finds in Richard is an honest, curious person with imagination. These are rare qualities, whether in a photographer or not. And probably that’s why Richard and I have been friends for many years through this thing they call the web.

As a photographer, I’m not interested in someone that takes pictures like me – I’m interested in someone who has found their own road to travel. That is such a rare thing in this world. And that is Richard. I wish him luck in all his endeavors because he adds something new to this tired world.

by Dave Beckerman

A photograph records whatever was in front of the lens at the time of exposure. Each detail contained is a fact, captured indiscriminately, whether it is important or not. It is the job of  the photographer to – effectively and ironically – manipulate the arrangement of these facts to make a meaningful statement by means of a photograph.

In the years that I have known Richard Vanek, he has from the outset struck me as someone who despite acknowledging facts, be it image content or the process that created it, is not overly concerned about facts. Richard has set himself the ambitious goal to make his emotional view of the world visible via his photographs. Feelings of childhood, of cold city quarters or simply the feeling of being awake at night, watching. In a world where reflected and well-considered opinion is competing with haphazard snippets of fleeting persona, I always enjoy looking at the personal views of Richard Vanek.

by Dirk Rösler | Japan Exposures

What I like about Richard’s photographs, goes beyond them being technically beautiful images, his framing and composition, the way the light falls just so, the lights and darks within, as they are always evident and well done. What makes Richard’s wonderful works wonderful, is how his images transcend just merely being photographs in the way they evoke a whole array of feelings, emotions, and/or memories.

Richard produces work that is very personal, touching on expressing themes within his images, that convey a little story, or piece of ourselves that we can relate to. And his artistic and creative courage in his ways of trying to explore these feelings, emotions, memories, andbring them into visual images, I find very admirable, commendable, and inspiring.

by Jeffrey Paul Howard

Richard is an artist. He wants to create and put a part of himself in it. For me this is the essence of his work. The communication medium he has chosen to do this, happens to be photographs, but it could as well have been anything else in which you can put part of your soul, like music or literature. Fortunately, Richard’s passion for photography makes that he fully masters all the technical aspects. So when looking at his pictures, you will not be distracted by technical impurities.

Communication is only established when the receiver captured the message of the sender. In case of Richard, communication is successful, if he manages to invoke emotion in the viewer. If I look at Richard’s pictures, I feel soft melancholy and happy nostalgia. In fact, lots of memories and moods that I used to have as a kid, but that were suppressed by my everyday adult life, come back into my mind. Richard goes the hard way, because the pictures he makes, express his personal emotions and do not have the intention to please a as large as possible audience.

My question to you, visitor, is whether you’re going to quickly scan Richard”s web page for something interesting, only using your eyes, because you still have so many other things to do today? Or will you make a small investment and look with your heart?

by Erco Argante