engleski

A Slit through Photography. Innovative Strategies in Croatian Photography during the 1960s and 1970s

Post-war experimental and conceptual photography in former Yugoslavia has only rarely been the subject of more 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 continuously 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, both in terms of form and subject-matter. In this article, I will consider 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, my research aims to change the paradigm of the peripheral position and general ignorance of the circumstances under which this innovative practice emerges.

photography ; experiment ; conceptual art ; art of behaviour

nije evidentirano