Dialogue of Milota Havránková with Tina Čorná at the exhibition opening of Green House, marking the artist’s 60th anniversary, published in SME newspaper 20 October 2005.

In what sense is photography irreplaceable?

For me it is the second language.

Changes have penetrated your entire work. Have you ever feared how your new radical approach will end up?

I have often faced the fact that people seemed to have “buried” me and said this was my end. When I started doing fashion design, artists thought that I had gone completely mad. But I simply felt the urge to try out something new and get to the people who thought in a different way. It helped me a lot and even though I got excellent feedback, I am not engaged in fashion any more.

Why? You were successful with your exceptionally elegant fashion design.

To tell you the truth, I am not interested in fashion and I have never bought fashion magazines. My parents were aestheticians – they always tried to create for us an environment in which we could feel well. This has remained in every aspect. Environment greatly influences the human being and determines his/her living space. To balance life in the city, I have a wooden cottage in Central Slovakia where I spend three months a year. I disappear from Bratislava and live with country people who know nothing about my work. I feel great.

Is it also a part of the Green House, the title of your jubilee exhibition this year?

Yes, it is. And so is the orchard around the cottage with almost one hundred fruit trees which I have never picked fruit from. It falls on the ground, and horses and cows graze there and consume it, some of it is taken by my visitors.

Do you take photographs of rustic nature?

So far I have only drawn inspiration from nature, this theme matures inside me, but sometime I will certainly come up with it. I have always been afraid of taking photographs of nature, because one quickly slips into something eye-catching. When people find themselves in nature, they go into raptures over everything. I have received two thousand photographs to judge for the amateur competition of Sony, all of them with nature motifs. Every second print is the same. I am surprised by the degree of illusory sentiment in people. They are natural imitators.