Epitaf (Epitaph)

'Epitaf' is a suggestive and strange photograph. The title, the angle of the shot and the arrangement of objects within the composition are all equally provocative and raise many questions. Who is the girl? What is her relationship to this man? Is she alive? And what is the meaning of the sexual innuendo here? Flowers are laid around the man’s groin like those around the grave of a loved one. The roses, wilted and dry, capture the passage of time and further evoke theme of death. In contrast to Baňka’s other playful photos, this piece takes on a far darker tone. Nonetheless, Baňka’s allusion to the ephemeral is ambiguous and has the same nostalgic and surrealist quality seen in the rest of his body of work.

[Emelia Ho, 'Epitaf (Epitaph)' in "Suppression, Subversion, and the Surreal: The Art of Czechoslovakian Resistance," (Los Angeles: USC Fisher Museum of Art, 2019) 64.]