Jaroslava Šnajberková Photographer

18/05/2026

"In the Sierra Nevada I have learned how strongly people experience themselves as part of the environment around them. During the first encounter, I wrote in my diary that in that moment I was no longer a photographer, but just a sensitive layer of film on which light falls. Later, when I returned to the Sierra Nevada again, I sometimes felt that the most important decision was actually not to take the photograph at all. Some experiences felt too complete to transform them into an image and break the fragility of the what I see really was. Long periods away from the field during maternity leave slowed down the research and the distance paradoxically created space for even more closeness."

Presentation of short paper The Mountain Knows Who You Are on method of autoehtnography by Jaroslava Šnajberková , Mirian Tavares and José Bidarra at TELL ME Symposium 28-29 May 2026 Online, Macau, China, Portimão, Portugal; São Paulo, Brazil.

This work is supported by CIAC - Centro de Investigação em Artes e Comunicação .centro_de_investigacao and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. 🙏🏻

08/05/2026

Nabusimake.
The road from Pueblo Bello rises and falls around pink rocks and cracks. The clay is soft and smooth to the touch. A taxi-like off-road vehicle navigates over huge rocks and through gullies created by runoff water to the place where the sun rises1. The car is full of people whose bodies humbly endure the heat and the acrobatic skill of the driver, who tackles the terrain with the ease of fulfilling a task, ensuring the car does not get stuck somewhere in the middle of the lunar landscape. Once it drops off the passengers and their unusual luggage at the destination, it shuttles back for a new batch of bodies to fulfil a new assignment.
A welcoming procession is already waiting at the entrance to Nabusimake, its members helping to load the brought gifts of food onto mules. Among the trees stands a young man astride a horse, giving the impression as if he were part of a film scene. At least that is how it appears to the photographer.
The photographer enters the act, still quietly and unobtrusively, but she already sees she finds herself somewhere beyond her idea of reality, yet so ordinary and obvious and archetypal. Her mind is not able to grasp the established concept of time that flows here, and in which she meets people that she recognises very well, yet in the depth of the soul, shaped by the overseas homeland, she has already forgotten. The Ikʉ people radiate something absolutely essential and well known into the space, but she cannot give it a name, despite this, the photographer maintains a distance, almost a religious respect, bowing deeply to her knees, to a culture she does not know. She forgets about herself, her roots, the past; she becomes invisible, she has her role here; nevertheless, she takes photographs, but now she is not a photographer but just a camera, an eye, the lens of the device, a frame of film onto which drops of light are dotted.
At the very centre
It is very cold and yellow.
On the next layer it is white.
Some layers are reddish,
And other bright colours.
But the outermost layer,
That nearest to the surface,
Is of the best black earth.
(Tayler, 1997, p. 35)
Šnajberková

22/04/2026

(March 3, 2019)
We say goodbye to everyone. I ask the Máma if I can take another picture of him. He suggests I take a picture of him with his wife. As I am leaving, I turn around for the last time and take the very last picture of the whole family. Shortly afterwards, the car is bouncing again over the mountains to Pueblo Bello, which is an in-between station between two worlds. In the rearview mirror, I see a woman in a white blouse, but I cannot remember who is looking at me. In the evening, I am leaving Valledupar for Bogotá and then home to Berlin. I am searching vainly in my mind for a memory of the past days in the Sierra Nevada. Everything was there. Nothing can be carried out. Everything will stay there. Not even a photo posted on Instagram. I do not have to be in the Sierra Nevada, and yet I am there. The exposed film reels are evidence of an encounter that, with only a few hours’ separation on board the plane, seems to be imaginary, affirming in Barthes’s words that ‘what I see really was’ (Barthes, 2005, p. 78). I sleep through almost the entire journey across the ocean. When I wake up, we are already more than four thousand miles from Bogotá. It is already a bright day outside. I had a dream that I was in slavery. An Ikʉ woman was there too. And the dream was about her pain. A stopover in Madrid. In the meantime, I discover that the name of the city is not literally from the word ‘mother’. (Šnajberková, 2019).

19/04/2026

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403968222_Digital_Masks_Reimagining_Digital_Media_for_Co-Presence_with_the_Kogi

PDF | On Apr 13, 2026, Jaroslava Šnajberková and others published Digital Masks: Reimagining Digital Media for Co-Presence with the Kogi | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

04/04/2026

https://youtu.be/2KfGJeuQ12U?is=yq9lpw8tKd3scloX

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

05/09/2025

The importance of not simulating or staging interactions became apparent. Attempts to “fabricate” scenes or responses were intuitively felt to be dishonest and generated unease. Authenticity in presence, then, was no longer a philosophical idea yet a pragmatic guideline. The trails in the mountains—navigated often alone or at a deliberate distance from others—provided opportunities for solitude, which in turn enhanced perceptual clarity. A preference emerged for walking either at the front or rear of a group, as intermediate positioning disrupted concentration and bodily rhythm.
From the fieldwork notes and photographs, Yosagaka, 2019
🪶📖

11/06/2025

18/07/2024

Kággaba en Lisboa, Universidade Aberta 2024

19/06/2024

OPENEYE le regard d'aujourd'hui sur la photographie, numéro 37 juin-juillet-août 2024 @ Jaroslava Šnajberková