At the age of thirteen I have already had many, many of my own pictures seen through the camera’s objective. I have never had entirely elaborated that experience. I have never even talked to the people who had similar experience.
At that age usually you don’t like most of your photos, not to mention the body on the screen and the spoken text, left with all childish mistakes from the first reading. Even today, in my memory, that creature on the screen is one person, while inside myself I am another person. We are both I.
– Unbearable.
The strongest feeling is the great uneasiness. Extremely strong and direct proof of how much my perception differs from the perception of the others. On the screen I am thinner and longer… faster, funnier, warmer than I wanted to be…
I wished for the ground to open underneath me while at the same time I was enjoying it extremely.
This conscious wish to fold outer and inner image maybe had the greatest influence on my life. Because they overlap completely only in the moments of ecstatic happiness or more directly: the ecstasy I can experience is defined by overlapping.
* * *
I wanted this exhibition to be different. I didn’t succeed.
The trouble begins with the view. Outer and inner image cannot be coordinated.
Every reading of the artistic work is simplification of its meaning and positioning the artist in the web of artistic events is unavoidably stiffening.
Conscious procedure and vital play of the elements of semiotic triad defined the art in this moment. Everything else is adornment and free choice of technique, style, format…
– Unbearable.
The material that I keep casting from one hand into another causes slight cramping of my stomach. I am trying to be gentle.
– This is slippery.
Small gray-yellowish Polaroids with gigantic passpartouts, so petit bourgeois. Yes, here we all agreed that he want it to look petit bourgeois.
– But I photograph flowers from the very beginning.
I know that he photographs flowers from the very beginning and I am not trying to close him into harsh, hard, ironic style of Ivan Posavec’s classic b/w photography. The Polaroids are static, slow, unique. They are powerful notes on private time. Time in which the sharp edges of chosen and imposed roles are melting. Somebody else’s gaze…
It bothers me that they are picturesque, softened with patina of deliberately spoiled procedure.
I am trying to understand the reasons.
– There is too much of uncontrolled picturesqueness, if you ask me.
– What do you mean?
– It’s sentimental and pathetic.
– Yes, yes, yes. I am sentimental and pathetic.
– It’s uncontrolled. These edges…
– It’s a Polaroid; you’re not familiar with its technology.
– It may be so, but they can’t be like this, not in these frames, with those passpartouts. Exhibition is a show with clear concept.
Sixth curatorial commandment says that forewords for the exhibitions have to be affirmative. I don’t know if this exhibition is a sin.
– God, I was so embarrassed. – and his face blushes again.
Bags and cameras, tripods over his back, breath quickened with effort and excitement… I doubt that anybody who looks at Posavec’s sharp, uncompromised classic b/w photos can imagine how does it look like when he’s ashamed like a child. Almost without visible cause he blushes to the very top of his head.
But he remains on his feet. He opens himself to the strong emotion and he doesn’t break.
– You are incredibly honest! – a shudder goes through me.
As observer I don’t’ dare to stare as much as I would like to. The same happened with Polaroids. That is how I figured out their soft spot.
– Is this soft spot yours or mine?
I ask him to show the heaped up Polaroids only to me. Unprepared for reception and recipient.
It didn’t go without resistance, but I got them before the selection, in a silver-gray box. They are tidied there like uncensored notes from the private world of photographer.
Flowers on table. Knife and rope. Nineteenth century sculpture in park. Branches, façades, street, boy melted in strong light of the overexposed frame. Tulips in vase, saffrons in few different expositions.
I am too ashamed to stare as much as I would like to in the faces of people, their bodies caught in entirely private space-time. I am too ashamed to show all the curiosity that I feel in my stare. The curiosity that gets into the pores of the skin of the person in the photograph, the person who took it and who watches me staring at the Polaroids.
– Autobiography?
– Yes!
I was passing over the photos much faster than I wanted to. I was looking at them as if I was ashamed, as if watching them was forbidden, as if it was entirely indecent. Where does this feeling of voyeurism come from?
– You’re looking at me. You can see how I see your gaze.
– No, give yourself some time.
Self-portrait as autobiography blends positions of the observer and the observed and clearly directs to the paradox of outer and inner image. In that position they still cannot overlap, but their clear opposition is melted — it does not exist. Everything slips away and becomes shapeless — closer to the experienced, further from the reflexive, closer to the physical, further from the rational.
These Polaroids are chosen to be shown although they were not representable at first. They were not meant for another eye. That is where these passpartouts, these marvelous exhibition packings come from. It is an attempt of subsequent restoration of distance.
Hung on the wall, isolated in the frames — they are detached. The beholding eye is not to be seen anymore.
– Indecent curiosity can be balanced with honest interest. And it might not.
Marina Vicul
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Ivan Posavac born in Dužica, near Sisak in 1951. Moved to Zagreb in 1969 to study veterinary medicine, but discontinued studies in 1973. just before completing final exams for graduation; fully dedicated himself to photography.
Graduated from Academy of Theatre, Film and Television in 1980. His work has been published in all of the most important periodicals: Polet, Studentski list, Mladina, Danas, Start, Vjesnik, Pitanja, Komunist, Svijet, Globus, Glorija and Arena. Became the youngest person to win the annual awards of the Yugoslav Photography Federation in 1984. Won the Tošo Dabac award in 1992.
He has been conferred about fifty various awards and honors. His works have been presented at approximately three hundred exhibitions. The Museum of Contemporary Art has collected about ninety of his works, while the Museum of Arts and Crafts has about ten. He is a member of the Fine and Applied Arts Association of Croatia.
In 1979, together with Milisav Vesović, he established the MO Group. The MO Group created over 150 cover pages for the weekly news magazine Danas.
