ZUZANA PUSTAIOVÁ – SAFETY REPORT

Exhibition: November – December 2025

The primary source of inspiration for Slovak photographer Zuzana Pustaiová‘s projects is her surroundings and the relationships that arise from them. She grew up near a nuclear power plant and has therefore been concerned with nuclear safety for a long time. She realized long ago that nuclear safety cannot be objectively assessed from publicly available sources, as the media, experts, political leaders, environmental NGOs, and other groups often provide biased opinions based on economic interests, personal ideologies, and beliefs. The title of the project, “Safety Report”, ironically refers to the indiscriminate mixing of opinions based on intuition and assumptions with knowledge, which ultimately causes fear and concern among the public. Moreover, this is a pattern that is far from unique to nuclear power.

This formally diverse project, containing original, archival, and manipulated photographs and videos, as well as extensive text material, was presented at the prestigious Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles photography festival as part of this year’s Discovery Award.

Zuzana Pustaiová (*1990) studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, Germany. In January 2022, she completed her doctoral studies at VŠVU. She has won numerous awards and exhibited at international exhibitions in Europe and Canada. Her first art book, based on the work One Day Every Day (2022), was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture Photobook Awards 2022. Pustaiová is a member of Reflektor, a platform for samizdat photobooks in Austria, and the Association of Slovak Professional Photographers in Slovakia. She lives and works in Levice and Bratislava. www.pustaiova.com