Rudolf Schuster was President of Slovakia from 1999 to 2004. He was elected on 29 May 1999 and inaugurated on 15 June. In the presidential elections of April 2004, in which he sought re-election, Schuster was defeated. He received only 7.4% of the vote, with three other candidates receiving more than that. He was succeeded by Ivan Gašparovič.
Presidential elections were held in Slovakia on 3 April 2004, with a second round on 17 April. Although former Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar received the most votes in the first round, he was defeated by Ivan Gašparovič in the run-off.
Ivan Gašparovič is a Slovak politician and lawyer who was President of Slovakia from 2004 to 2014. He was also the first and currently the only Slovak president to be re-elected.
The president of the Slovak Republic is the head of state of Slovakia and the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The president is directly elected by the people for five years, and can be elected for a maximum of two consecutive terms. The presidency is largely a ceremonial office, but the president does exercise certain limited powers with absolute discretion. The president's official residence is the Grassalkovich Palace in Bratislava.
Martin Bútora is a Slovak sociologist, writer, university professor and diplomat.
Jan Saudek is an art photographer and painter. He and his twin brother Kaja Saudek are holocaust survivors.
Martine Franck was a British-Belgian documentary and portrait photographer. She was a member of Magnum Photos for over 32 years. Franck was the second wife of Henri Cartier-Bresson and co-founder and president of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.
Albert Watson OBE is a Scottish fashion, celebrity and art photographer. He has shot over 100 covers of Vogue and 40 covers of Rolling Stone magazine since the mid-1970s, and has created major advertising campaigns for clients such as Prada, Chanel and Levis. Watson has also taken some well-known photographs, from the portrait of Steve Jobs that appeared on the cover of his biography, a photo of Alfred Hitchcock holding a plucked goose, and a portrait of a nude Kate Moss taken on her 19th birthday.
Andreas H. Bitesnich is an Austrian photographer and musician. He specializes in nude and portrait photography. His work appears regularly in international magazines.
Borys Andriyovych Mykhailov is a Ukrainian photographer. He has been described as "one of the most important artists to have emerged from the former USSR."
Rudolf Fila was a Slovak painter, educator and author, best known for his artistic reinterpretations of the works of Gustav Klimt. He resided in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Toshiki Ozawa, was a Japanese photographer.
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz is a stateside Puerto Rican photographer. He is best known for his social documentary photography of people's living conditions in less developed nations. Rivera-Ortiz lives in Rochester, New York and in Zurich.
Yuri Kosin Ukrainian: Косін Юрій Олекса́ндрович is a Ukrainian photographer, lecturer, curator of exhibitions, and traveler. Kosin is a member of the National Society of Photo Artists of Ukraine, tutor and curator at the Independent Academy of the Photographic Arts of Ukraine, organizer and curator of the "Eksar" photo gallery, Ukraine. He is also a member of the "Kulturforum" association and the artistic studio "Kulturwerkstatt Trier", Germany. He is a permanent member of the TV Ukrainian program "Svoimi ochima" (eyewitness) dedicated to travel and tourism. Kosin was named one of the experts in photography criticism in Ukraine in expert poll conducted in 2011
Yuri Dojc is a Slovak-Canadian fine arts photographer. Dojc currently resides in Toronto, Canada, with work internationally exhibited in countries such as Brazil, Slovakia, Rwanda as well as across Canada.
Peter Dench is a photojournalist working primarily in advertising, editorial and portraiture photography. His work has been published in a number of his own books, exhibited and won awards.
Szymon Roginski is a Polish photographer.
Peter W. Haas, is a Slovak art photographer. He is a member of the International Association of Art. He focuses on analogue photographing and noble techniques like platinotype, bromoil and kallitype. His pieces of art belong to collections of many dignitaries of artistic, political and business sphere in Europe, the USA, Russia and Australia.
Zoltan Vancso is a Hungarian photographer, photo reporter. He primarily became renowned for his black and white photography but nowadays he takes color photos reflecting explicit and deliberate concepts. His work is characterized by a peculiar "Vancsonesque" perspective: opting for formally simple solutions but nonetheless creating an inexhaustible world through his pictures. "It is not allowed to either write of, think of or associate the photos of Zoltan Vancso with anything. These pictures are objects of meditation." Peter Mueller, writer. "Zoltan Vancso cultivates photography philosophically, and saying this is the greatest compliment, the deepest form of appreciation on my part."
Martin Kollar, born 23 November 1971 in Žilina, is a Slovak photographer and cinematographer.
