“Seven things about…” the health-giving power of Nature
By Lucia Almášiová, curator of the modern and contemporary art collections
From time immemorial, human beings have been closely connected with Nature. From Nature they came, and to Nature they return. And although in due course they abandoned rural life and learned to live also in towns, faced with various problems they have gone back to Nature repeatedly. Consider, for example, that when plague epidemics struck the great cities, people fled to safety in rural parts, far away from one another. The boom times of the Industrial Revolution induced similar reactions, when city-dwellers escaped from polluted environments to the healing benefits of mountain air and unconstrained movement.
Today, when for the most part we have enclosed ourselves in offices and indoor spaces, again we enjoy going to the countryside after work and during the weekend, for sports and relaxation. Nature helps us to maintain our physical and mental health; it is a source from which we draw new energy and new experiences. We delight in observing its transformations during the year, and even the weather events of every day.
In the following selection we will introduce 7 photographs from the SNG’s Photomedia Collection, connected with the theme of the health-giving power of Nature. Here and there, perhaps, they may offer an item or two of new knowledge.
1/ Pilgrim Above the Crags
In a central section of the High Tatras, hidden from the eyes of ordinary tourists, is the little-known and not easily accessible Nefcerka Valley, one of Kôprová Valley’s principal eastern offshoots. Apart from the high rocky scarps and the wild, proliferating Tatra vegetation, one will also find there a number of mountain lakes and waterfalls. Like other places in the Tatras, this valley was first visited long ago by unknown shepherds, chamois hunters, and miners; the first written reference to it comes from 1867. Because of the pristine state of the valley’s original beauty and the plentiful numbers of game animals that it sheltered, high-ranking aristocrats also were attracted there to hunt. Archduke Rudolf’s Hunting Lodge, with adjacent cottages for servants and drivers, was built for this purpose about 1880. Evidently from one of those hunting expeditions, associated also with climbing for the purpose of taking photos, we have this shot by the noted Tatra photographer Karol Divald (1830–1897), of an unknown hunter posing high on a crag. For us it is a kind of symbol of a pilgrim above the clouds, who after his arduous ascent comes finally to a halt and silently, in an inward communion with Nature, contemplates its beauty and boundlessness.
2/ Spa Strolls
That the natural springs in the Trenčianske Teplice region had healing power, was known already from the 13th century. The origin and development of the spa came about thanks to several of the proprietors of the nearby Trenčin Castle, and especially the Ilešházi family in the 17th and 18th centuries. After 1835 the spa was improved by the Viennese financier Juraj Sina, both of whose children subsequently continued his work. In 1909 ownership of the spa passed to a Hungarian share company; after 1918 it was owned by a Czechoslovakian share company. During the interwar period the little town was enriched with several new buildings, including what are today much-prized works of functionalism: the Machnáč Curative House and the Green Frog Swimming Pool. To this day, the spa is focused on healing the musculoskeletal system: part of the cure consists of walks in the extensive spa park, with its lake. The little town and its park are hemmed in on both sides by steep forested slopes — to the south Čvirigovec, Klepáč and Machnáč and to the north Slimáková Peak, Grófovec and Ostrý Peak. Thus immersed in a wealth of green, the part of the spa town near the Barracks was captured by a Czech photographer from Prague, either Rudolf Bruner-Dvořák (1864–1921) or his brother Jaroslav (1881–1942). In the form of a heliograph reproduction, the shot appears in a small trilingual promotional album, published in Budapest in the Legrady Brothers firm. This was evidently created before 1918, on commission from the Hungarian owners of the time.
3/ Relaxing by the Sea
For the middle class of interwar Czechoslovakia, one of the favourite summer activities was regularly travelling to seaside resorts, in search of health, relaxation, and a sight of the cultural wealth and beauty spots of foreign lands. During these holiday times amateur photographers also came, for their own purposes; thematic articles and advice features for their benefit often appeared in the photographic journals. One of these amateurs was the Trenčin civil servant Ladislav Farkaš (1895–1948), who began taking photographs while still a student. Later, in the 1930s, together with Ján Halaš, Ján Hajdúch, Štefan Marton and Karol Kállay, he formed a well-known group of Trenčin amateur photographers. In 1938 Farkaš took a photo of the sunset on the Adriatic sea; later, after the war, he presented himself with this photo at amateur photography exhibitions at home and abroad. In the shot he sensitively combined two popular motifs from the sea: the sunset and the small boat. At the same time, the photo calls up memories of the pleasant coolness of evening and evokes an impression of the rippling of little waves.
4/ Tired of the Sun
One of the striking figures of the amateur photographers’ movement in interwar Bratislava was the railway official Miloš Dohnány (1904–1944), whose family came originally from Austria. In the early 1930s he became a member of Bratislava’s Association of Amateur Photographers, founded at the YMCA; later he became its leading figure, promoting modern photography in the style of new realism. Also helping to acquaint him with the programme of modern photography were the evening courses he took at the School of Arts and Crafts, where he studied with the Czech photographer Jaromír Funke. Dohnány’s themes were modern architecture, urban civilism and the countryside, domestic still lifes, and motifs of everyday existence. His best works include the photograph of two children sleeping in an improvised cradle during their stay at an unidentified resort, shot from an overview and using striking diagonals which give the shot an uncommonly dramatic quality. In 1943 Dohnány presented this photograph at the Exhibition of Slovak Amateur Photographers, held at ground level in the open arcades of the Water Barracks (now SNG) in Bratislava.
5/ Tourist Outings
Hiking, as a form of relaxation in the countryside, was already very popular in Slovakia by the late 19th century. In the Tatra region the German-Magyar Hungarian Carpathian Society was the first to support it and create conditions for its development. Also active after 1918 were the Club of Czechoslovak Hikers, the Czechoslovak Skiers Union, and the Mountaineering Society, among others. At the turn of the year 1940, however, under pressure of political events these organisations were merged into one, under the name of the Club of Slovak Hikers and Skiers (KSTL). Since for many people at that time hiking went together with photography, or it was organisationally necessary to capture the amateur photographers also, the club created “photo groups” for them. There the amateurs met, exchanged experiences, and organised club or Czechoslovak exhibitions. An active member of KSTL then, and of other societies also, was the Martin bank official and amateur photographer Ján Galanda (1904–1960). As a hiker he moved round the mountains especially in the environs of Turiec and the Tatras, where he photographed his family and friends, motifs from outings, and sport. His shot called Prospect captures a couple in a relaxed moment in an unidentified vista high above the foothills, and it naturally evokes an impression of a scorching summer’s day with a gently blowing breeze.
6/ Sanatoria in the Mountains and Foothills
World War II wrought damage on both the psychic and physical health of the population of Slovakia. As a result of poor nourishment, bad hygienic conditions and a relatively weak level of health education, various diseases often spread among the people, in particular tuberculosis. Prior to the discovery of effective antibiotics, this long-familiar disease was treated by stays in mountain sanatoria and climatic spas; afterwards these continued to provide an important auxiliary therapy. The spa at Lučivná, beneath the Tatras, was founded for this purpose in 1872. After being administered by a variety of owners (including the state) who gradually expanded the spa, it serves this purpose, particularly for children, to the present day. A school was even built in the precinct. And evidently it was there, in 1946, that the amateur photographer Viliam Malík (1912–2012) photographed children reading magazines together. Malík at that time was working, among other things, in the newly-established photographic department of the National Insurance. He himself convalesced in the Tatras in 1951 after an accident, and later he settled there in the Tatranská kotlina.
7/ New Experiences
To travel independently on holiday during the first decades of socialism was not a simple matter. Apart from the necessary finances, it was essential to have a place on the long waiting list at the travel agency and, along with other documents, a visa permit which guaranteed that one could be trusted to return. Even with all of that, however, initially it was possible to get to the sea only in allied countries of the Eastern bloc, most frequently Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Romania. In some cases, one had to make do with Balaton in Hungary. Workers organised in the various trade unions and similar bodies had an advantage: if they belonged, for example, to ROH (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement), which occasionally took charge of providing recreation for its members in the form of group tours. And so these women co-op workers in their working clothes, whom we see in a shot by the news and theatre photographer Anton Šmotlák (1920–1979) in 1957 — they too had made it to the sea, evidently for the first time in their lives. Laughing at the new situation that they found themselves in, from habit they would not permit themselves to uncover and plunge in the water anything more than their feet.
