The perception of the transformation of visible reality is one of the elements that directly touch upon POKRIVENO/COVERED, a cycle of photographs by Jasenko Rasol. The photographs have been taken in the past six years; they are a statement on the modern society, the process whereby an author notes and expresses an idea and observation as the central topic of modern culture.
Structuring the process of viewing from the macro-world towards the micro-situation, Jasenko Rasol photographs objects in public places – objects whose contents are concealed, covered in tarpaulin and plastic sheets, hidden from the view for one reason or another. Construction materials, items left behind after a temporary urban intervention, all kinds of makeshift work areas and other unknown contents in a way threaten the organisation of the space as a whole, pointing to the reading of its other givenesses. Covering them is a legitimate reaction to the found contents of the space which one does not want to encumber any further. Simple mimicry does not function according to an ideal conceived model, and Rasol’s photographs seem therefore as a process in which the transience of the form is brought to awareness – the assemblage of futility threatened by weather and time.
The associativeness related to the photographed interventions is inevitable because both the author and most of the viewers are interested in the unrecognisable contents and in the reasons why it is considered unnecessary or even undesirable for others to look at them. The author himself rejects the aesthetic value of the photographs in this cycle, pointing to the temporary nature of the relations between the covered contents and the context of the space where they are located. On a symbolic level, the covered may reflect the shape of things, privately, locally and globally. Together with the author, the viewers become witnesses to those human actions and reactions in solitary environments or locations defined by the historical buildings around them and the contents therein.
In Rasol’s photographs of unassuming, everyday states, the covered objects, as much as they are at the centre of his attention, do not automatically become the source of a specific content. The atmosphere of the presentation mediates the remnants of someone’s activities, creating an impression that one is entering into spaces set up exclusively for those who want to look and comprehend the whole in all its parts. Nothing is final, everyone is entitled to draw their own personal conclusions, which are just as temporary, because the covered contents have in the meantime changed places, becoming part of visible reality.
Modern media culture often does not rely on authentic procedures but on stereotypes and repetitions. Doubting anything we are not in the position to see leads to the repetition of the procedure; using a camera to record things is of assistance here, as it transforms what is seen into an authorial intervention – a process which includes perception and representation. The author’s experience founded in this manner in the historical context is seen as a starting point for photographic reflection, a controlled and disciplined strategy of viewing. Rasol’s role in this sequence is constituent, as he accepts the perceived conditions, presenting them as they are, making it possible for us to focus our attention on details which do not strive towards the reconstruction of the whole.
Sandra Krizic Roban
