On this image writer's Zdenek Mahler T-shirt has a few buttons more than it's necessary.
This manipulation I did in a few minutes - I erased a hand of another singer and Carrera's finger.
On the 31st of August I had to photograph the traffic jam. I came to the place, but there was no jam. To get the picture I had a possibility to throw a brick on the highway or to choose the less painful way - to go home and make the photo in peace. (The most crucial issues for newspaper "Denik" were traffic jams, dirty streets and parks, homeless, foreigners and weather.)
Here I created the third X-ray image, to make impression that the worker is more working.
After Christmas Day I had to take a picture of the garbage on the streets. I brought a Christmas tree and photographed a content of the one of the garbage containers. Later the image of trash form the container I added in the foreground next to the tree.
Here I made more switches.
On the foreigners T-shirt I wrote "SMRT" (DEATH). It's my message to police.
On this photograph I made more blue circles in the background, in order to make it more nicer and to have more chance to have it published on the first page, and it was there.
Next to the children I added Merry Andrew, to make photograph more lovely.
On the T-shirt of ballet dancer I added the bone.
Here I deformed the shape of historical cart in botanical garden.
On the wall I made an inscription - "PÍČA" (CUNT).
Here on the man's hand I made tattoo (the cross).
On the tram I added one more number "8".
I enlarged one of the lamps and wrote "Super" on it. These lamps been always fascinating me. (The New super technology for health).
In this photo I made one more floor for Karlshtein tower.
The project “My Newspaper” was realized during one year while I was working as a photo-reporter in one of the main daily Czech newspapers - “Deník”. Everyday from photo editors and journalists I got several assignments to photograph events around Prague. Before sending photographs to the newspaper's Photo-bank I quickly manipulated them in Photoshop. Originally idea was to change some little, unimportant details where the manipulation wouldn't change much the content of the photograph, for example, adding some more buttons on writer's Zdenek Mahler T-shirt or painting inscription - „Cunt“ on the brick wall. Although during the process it happened to make some more radical ones, for example, creating a traffic jam on the highway or cutting off singer's José Carreras finger. The aim of this project was to make an absurd manipulation over the media manipulations. (Ivars Gravlejs)
Gravlejs project “My Newspaper” is a typical example of so called „Subversive Art“. Art which is parasitic on the concrete subject and affects this subject (in this case media society), undermines and criticizes it. On the one hand Ivars Gravlejs deconstructs authority of medial business, deconstructs authenticity and objectivity of information (in any way medialized and interpreted), but on the other hand Gravlejs contemplates the circumstances of contemporary artist, who often has to suspend his/her creative process in order to earn money for living. Gravlejs carefully „smuggled“ his art in a everyday „Non-Art“ activity.
(Milan Mikuláštík)
Publication in the newspaper "Deník" about my exhibition in gallery NoD.
Text says: "From yesterday in Prague's gallery NoD is an exhibition by Ivars Gravlejs titled "My newspaper" 2008/2009. The theme of the exhibition is about contemporay artist Ivars Gravlejs's paradoxes and frustrations while working in commercial system."
