Only rarely do I set out to create portraits of actual persons. Mostly I use their faces and bodies solely for my own ends. Fatality, circumstances on the periphery, expressiveness, emotional extremes, the unclassifiable quality, as well as conflict with Being, submission, introversion, the desire for identification, the conflict of man's soul in our day and age. The sacred and the profane. A reduction of means to the minimum, frequent quotation, both of vision and of content. That is the space in which I try to move and to touch upon the essence of being human. Despite the methods used, I am convinced that these photographs bear the same measure of testimony both about me and about my models and friends. Ultimately they are the ones who have provided the impetus to these photographs. Ivan Pinkava