REVIEWS

ROBERT HUTINSKI - THE MIRROR

A series of 17 photos with the common title The Mirror is definitely about woman, and this is no coincidence. She is present on most of the photos, but not on all. Sometimes she appears in places in which there are mirrors or windows that can act as a mirror. In any case, her mirror images are unusual, since they are not possible in the real world.
Photographer deals with the image of a woman, he deals with women's gaze and the gaze upon her. It is also important that the woman in photos is never naked or stripped. In fact, it should be stressed that she is, as a rule, alone in a room, alone with her image. This is unusual. Where are the men?
We are accustomed that the men are gazing at women. On Robert's photos the woman is always all alone. It raises a feeling of loneliness and solitude. And the question is being put forward: Does a woman need a gaze of the other, the man?
There is just one answer.
The series of photos covers seventeen images, and in the whole series there is not even one man. Many times we see the mirror, but we never got the impression that the woman is using it to look at herself. The question arises, why the series got the title The Mirror, and also the question why the woman never looks at it. Namely, we are accustomed to looking in the mirror. Even more: we are used to see in the mirror what we like. Mirrors are, therefore, closely linked to the narcissism of the people.
But not in the series of Robert Hutinski, which is, because of that, exceptional, unusual and rare.
What does the author want? The woman, represented in his photos, is always stationary. She stares straight ahead. Sometimes she looks straight at us, sometimes she is staring out the window. She never looks in the mirror; she never looks at herself, into herself. What do we conclude?
We conclude that the photos of Robert Hutinski lead us to ask good questions, to think good ideas. For example: in the spectacular places of the modern world there are special rooms in which Robert invites a woman and thus transforms them to become rooms from another world, in which there is a lot of silence, peace and beauty. The woman is beautiful.
Hence, we don't need to look at mirrors. But, where is the man?
There are a lot more questions. Does the mirror mirror anything at all? Photo series titled Mirror apparently is not about mirroring. It's about woman, like I said; it is about places, about solitude and silence. All of this certainly holds true. But there's also a bed and space is not empty, it is not sterile. The photos are, of course, classic, black and white, but they're not the inanimate, boring and uninteresting. They are soft, pleasant and friendly. The woman is beautiful, but the man is gone.
I am talking about the nature of human existence, not about the beauty, superficial representations of the world and human beings inside it. Robert Hutinski is not a photographer who would reflect the objective reality; far from it. Ironically, he doesn't care about mirroring it. He creates new realities, inhabited by people, for which it could be said that they want different relationships than we are accustomed to in the world of mirrors and mirroring, this is in a world of imaginary scenarios and imaginary, illusionary mappings.
A turn happens: in the world to which we are accustomed there are too many ugly things, too much violence and too much narcissism. The mirror must therefore remain blank because we don't want to look at it. We prefer other people to look at them. Such is the importance of mirrors in the symbolic worlds in which Robert is moving.
In these worlds the men are definitively gone. Why?

Dušan Rutar