... Jan Pohribný, an artist from Czech Republic, has set out in a different direction. The countryside he makes present in his photographic pictures is merely a product of his imagination. It exists exclusively as a photographic object created for this purpose to be photographically introduced on the scene; it is an artifact, not a piece of nature. His imagination reaches far back to the history of mankind, when arts as an artistic practice was inseparable part of cultic rituals. A cult used to serve varied purposes as well as had the task to reconcile the gods of natural forces. Gods died a nature has to protect itself from human plunder. Pohribný conjures the moments of harmony between man and nature that have never came true. His tool is a photo-camera, not a brush, and in the same way as classical scenery, he uses wide-screen optics to impart the power of the real to the unnatural. In the Netherlands and Germany we may find similar tendencies in photographic art; the Czech artist, however, builds on the tradition of arts and photography of his country and emphasizes fantastic aspects of his landscapes, which sometimes have a character of magical places, as if gods returned and materialized in a dazzling light. People are absent; only photographer's work - his creation in the form of a picture - is here.
Klaus Honnef
(a part of an essay from the catalogue for an exhibition in IP Deutschland, 8.5. - 7.9. 2001, Köln, D)