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Abstract
Post-war experimental and conceptual photography in former Yugoslavia has only rarely been the subject of detailed study and interpretation. In considering this period, it is necessary to take into account several factors, including the absence of permanent exhibition spaces for photography, the lack of magazines in which photographic themes were presented and discussed, the impossibility of studying the field of photography and, finally, the inadequate knowledge and application of contemporary criticism and theories of photography. Nevertheless, from the mid-1950s onwards it is possible to note a variety of innovations in the field, in terms of both form and subject-matter. This article considers rare instances of institutional support for progressive photography-related events and unique, intellectual-poetic works. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, there is a dominant tendency to nationalize art created in the former state, thus ignoring the specific Yugoslav cultural field as well as the European context. Based on a methodology which surpasses the national (but still acknowledges it) and searches for meaning within the broader socio-political space to which art is referring, the research aims to change the paradigm of the peripheral position and general ignorance of the circumstances under which this innovative practice emerges.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Thus, among other things, courses were held at the Moša Pijade Workers’ and Peoples’ University in Zagreb, which taught students about the modern way of life, literature, abstract art and the design of residential spaces.
2 For a discussion of the New Tendencies movement, see exhibition catalogues: New Tendencies, 1961; New Tendencies 2, 1963; New Tendency 3, 1965; Tendencies 4, 1969; Tendencies 5, 1973 (Zagreb: Gallery of Contemporary Art, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1969, 1973); Weibel, bit international.
3 The SPOT photography magazine was published by the Gallery of Contemporary Art (GSU, today Museum of Contemporary Art), between 1972 and 1978. Altogether, 11 issues were published. The editor was Radoslav Putar, director and head curator of GSU. Exhibitions entitled New Photography were held four times, organized as a result of collaboration between three institutions – GSU Zagreb, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and the Exhibition Salon Rotovž in Maribor (1974, 1976, 1980 and 1984).
4 Vaništa, Gorgona što je to?
5 Stipančić, Josip Vaništa, 161.
6 Vaništa, Gorgona što je to?
7 An irony of fate is the fact that many copies of the magazine were for years available in the hall outside Vaništa’s room in the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb, where he worked, because there was almost no interest in them.
8 Benjamin, “Umjetničko djelo,” 68.
9 Gattin, “Gorgona: Protokol dostavljanja misli,” 29, 98.
10 Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” 91.
11 Stipančić, Josip Vaništa, 161.
12 Gattin, “Gorgona,” 21.
13 Križić Roban, “Anti-art, Isolation, Silence,” 9–20.
14 Bago and Majača, “Spit in the Eye of Truth,” 121.
15 Lee, “The Austerlitz Effect,” 185.
16 Gronert, “Alternative Pictures,” 86.
17 Denegri, “Pojedinačna mitologija Tomislava Gotovca,” 5.
18 Ibid., 5.
19 Ibid., 5.
20 Bernik and Jeraj, “Nova fotografija,” n.p.
21 Ibid.
22 “Ed Ruscha Discusses his Perplexing Publications,” Artforum 5 (February 1965), quoted in: Shannon, “Uninteresting Pictures,” 92.
23 Groys, “Poetics of Entropy,” 4.
24 Martek, “Čuvar vanjskih zidova fotografije,” n. p.
25 Ibid.
26 Putar, “Razlozi za jednu inicijativu,” 27.
27 Ibid., 27.
28 Ibid., 37.
29 Kovač, “A Letter to Ivan Faktor,” 31.
30 Paraphrased according to Kovač, in ibid., 34–35.
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Notes on contributors
Sandra Križić Roban
Sandra Križić Roban, PhD, is an art critic, curator, lecturer, writer and a senior research advisor based at the Institute of Art History, Zagreb in Croatia. She is head of the Office for Photography, a non-profit cultural association, and author of At Second Glance: The Positions of Contemporary Croatian photography (2010) and Croatian Painting from 1945 until Today (2013).