Rifo Dobra
{{short description|Albanian photographer from Kosovo|bot=PearBOT 5}}
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{{Infobox artist
| image = Rifo Dobra.jpg
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1952|04|14|df=y}}
| birth_place = Pristina, Kosovo, Yugoslavia
| nationality = Albanian
| movement = Art photography, abstraction
| awards =
| field = Photography, collage, film, painting
}}
Rifo Dobra (born 14 April 1952) is an Albanian photographer from Kosovo.
Early life and education
Dobra was born in Pristina, and after finishing secondary school he moved to Czechoslovakia (today's Czech Republic), where he was employed as a camera assistant in the Czechoslovak Television in Prague. From 1972, he was studying camera the Prague Film and TV Academy (FAMU), which he successfully finished in 1978.{{Cite web|url=https://www.famu.cz/soubory/dokumenty/katedry/kk/seznam_diplomek_kk-_podle_cisel.rtf|title=List of dissertations at the Department of Cinematography, FAMU Prague.|website=Film Academy of Performing Arts Prague|access-date=3 October 2016}}
Career
Dobra's first attempts at photography began when he was 15. The first publication of his photos in the Yugoslavian press were followed by a participation in many national exhibitions. Besides advertisement and creations of covers and calendars, Dobra inclined more and more towards artistic photography, which gradually became his main focus. The gold medal in the national competition and silver one in an international one were followed by his first personal exhibition in Pristina, in 1977,{{citation needed|date=October 2016}} and several other exhibitions in Czechoslovakia (Prague), Germany (Kassel, Berlin), and other European countries.
File:Rifo Dobra - Prague exhibition 1983.jpg
In 1991, Dobra founded the first commercial photographic gallery in Czechoslovakia,{{Cite book|title=Certainty and Searching in Czech Photography of the 1990s (Jistoty a hledání v české fotografii 90. let)|last=Birgus|first=Vladimír|last2=Vojtěchovský|first2=Miroslav|publisher=Kant|year=2006|isbn=80-901903-6-7|location=Prague|pages=32|language=en, cs}} which organized or participated in several exhibitions during the 1990s. Some of them were beneficially oriented, for example the 1999 exhibition, which raised funds for the displaced refugees of the Kosovo war, or the 2000 exhibition raising funds for the victims of breast cancer in the Czech Republic.{{Cite web|url=http://www.mammahelp.cz/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/vz2000.pdf|title=Mamma Help Yearly Summary, 2000|website=Mamma Help|access-date=2 October 2016}}
= Works =
Dobra creates almost exclusively hand-coloured black-and-white photographs, where the hand colouring plays a specific role as a means of expression.{{Cite journal|title=Rifo Dobra v Praze|journal=Československá fotografie|language=cs|publisher=Panorama, Prague|volume=12/1986|issn=0009-0549}} Dobra's works are often still lifes, featuring abstract themes of life (egg), contrasting elements (slice of a watermelon pressed into the carrier of an old bicycle) and surreal compositions, sometimes distantly inspired by works of classical surrealist painters such as René Magritte. Dobra's photography is closely tied to the poetics of melancholy, often exhibited by using an old, rotten wall with a falling, mouldy plaster as a background,{{Cite journal|last=Huber|first=Jörg Adrian|title=Rifo Dobra|journal=Československá fotografie|language=cs|publisher=Panorama, Prague|volume=11/1983|issn=0009-0549}} or other worn down items (not rarely in contrast to things colourful, new and fragile).
References
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Category:Artists from Pristina