Well today after approximately 7 months of toiling, I finally finished the reformatting effort of every set on the website to make each page easier to browse on a mobile device and to add some additional commentary and observations about each set. I had performed the set updates in reverse chronological sequence starting with the most recent sets first and finally completing her earliest sets just today. It is during my work this morning that I came upon this quandary about the timeline which I am having trouble to reconcile.
Like many of these early sets I am not 100% certain of exactly when any specific set was taken since most of the accounts of Veronika’s early life adventures are centered around her lost camera equipment, which we were told on Veronika’s website had happened in 1997. By her own accounts it was that event that triggered her from moving from behind the camera to in-front of it.
Well if that did not happen until 1997 then the timeline between 1993 and 1997 does not hold any water. Her earliest published magazines were from Sept. 1997. I know 100% that she worked with photographer Jana Krenova in July 1997 and in some email exchanges with photographer Roberto Rocchi, was certain that he had photographed Veronika in 1996 already. In any case assuming his memory is faulty around that first time he had worked with Veronika, for sure he worked with her again a second time in June-July 1997 since several of the photos from that photo shoot wound up being published in several magazines in the Sept/Oct 1997 time frame.
Based on her much younger appearance in several of the early sets my suspicion is that Veronika posed nude before her camera equipment was stolen if we are to believe the 1997 date for that event. There is no way that all the nude material presented in the Early Years section of the Timeline could have been shot in Jan.-July period in 1997 if we assume best case that her camera was stolen on Jan. 1, 1997.
Hoping to start a bit of a debate here to see what other folks think. Am hoping that we can solve the mystery in the absence of hearing Veronika’s side of the story directly from her 😉
Looking forward to your posts!!!
By watching on my own “investigations” about Veronika, I think she started before 1997 with modeling…
Agree … my thinking is as early as 1994 or 1995 at least … that is the only thing that makes sense to me based on those early sets we have found.
based on interviews ive read and watched with her, is hard to believe some things she has claimed. i think she started earlier too, but I also believe she was not very comfortable with her line of work with friends and family back home. So I think she used the theft as an excuse for her modeling nude. in her Dani interiwew, she hinted to Dani that back home her career may be embarrassing but quickly added she wasn’t embarrassed, so who knows? She is a female after all and hardline truth is an enigma to them. In another interview Laurie Wallace asked her what advice she’d give to aspiring models and she responded “don’t do it”. that could mean she didnt approve of it at the time or perhaps she had had some bad experiences up to that point. I don’t know but I agree the timeline is inconsistent. But hell, Im glad she did go in front of the camera regardless of reasoning. I miss her. I also miss her interaction on her old website. I’d love to know how things are going for her these days and I hope she’s happy with Motherhood and has found a rewarding creative outlet. she painted at one time. In my opinion, no other model has come close to her. I doubt there ever will be, she’s my all time fave.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done on this wonderful website. please keep up the good work. she’s my ultimate dream girl.
Hi Julian …
thanks for the lengthy reply and the kind words about my site. Is nice to see that my efforts are still being appreciated by her long time fans.
I agree regarding the interview data you point out … I know that she did not have it easy in her early career …. being taken advantage of on numerous occasion … I can see why she would have said what she did to Danni and Laurie at that time. I don’t know why she would lie regarding her start date for modeling, unless it made her family and friends more understanding as you suggest. Maybe had they known that she actually started earlier would have caused her some uncomfortable embarrassment ….
In any case, I like you would love to know how she is doing today and hope all is well with her at least and that she is enjoying Motherhood 🙂
I wish I had the time to build a really good case or that I had actual facts to back myself up, but my opinion is that 1997 is probably the exact time that Veronika’s modelling career began. I really only have the following to support that fact though:
– It was the information that Veronika provided in multiple interviews (think.cz, etc).
– It seems that with a single exception the magazine publications and research that t-man has been able to conduct so far support the 1997 start date.
– I haven’t looked it up, but I remember a blog post by J. Stephen Hicks in which he said that it was obvious how little experience Veronika had as a model the first time he worked with her. This is a little flimsy, but if Veronika had truly been modelling for several years by 1998, I doubt that would have been true. On a side note, I think he also said something to the effect that Veronika was probably the most beautiful/gorgeous/amazing subject that he would ever work with in the same post (to be fair I forget the exact quote, but it was something like that).
With that said, I don’t believe that 1997 was the first time that Veronika posed nude either. If we take the story as provided (and we have little else to go on) Veronika went to school with and then worked with a bunch of photographers. I don’t doubt for a minute that pretty much all of them were trying to get Veronika to pose nude for artistic and other reasons. 🙂
I think the facts as reported in the “Early Years” section support that as well. Some of those sets seem to be shot by friends or perhaps fellow students that wanted to practice nude photography. I think(I have no proof ) Veronika reported on czechbeauty.com that some of the B&W photos were shot by the “person”/friend that taught her to pose. I have no doubt but that some of those photos(set 417, 237, some of he misc pics) were shot before the 1997 start of her career.
I would also guess, that she tried some amateur modelling as described in set-341 or because she was struggling to make it as a young student/photographer.
I probably shouldn’t, but guessing at a timeline I would say sometime in 1995/1996 for experimentation/amateur modelling and then her career in modelling started in 1997 because she was making money at it and because it was apparent that the photography career hadn’t worked out.
With all of the above said, I think that simply tagging all of Veronika’s early work that doesn’t have a known date as “Early Years”/Unknown is exactly the correct thing to do. It provides the information that can be verified without making wild guesses (like I do in this post :).
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
Finally, thanks for all of the hard work in putting the timeline together and for all of your work on the site.
Hi frodo ….
being such a long time fan of Veronika I value your opinion. I like your theory about school friends likely being the source of the pics in question. One of the early misc. pics has the name of Rene Sykora on them … I have tried to contact him with no luck so far … perhaps he took many of the early sets where she wears the leather caps is my guess …. they look semi-professional at least.
t-man