ABILITY OF CALM PERCEPTION
The works of the young photographer Marko Ercegović were up to now mostly marked by the absence of human figure. The artist was interested in silence and melancholy of southern landscapes, often complemented by geometric technological implementations manifested as details of iron fences, columns, tarmac… but mostly in ruined shape and entropy versions.
His photos often show a road with relevant signs, billboards and various vehicles. Yet Ercegović does not celebrate speed and journey, it rather seems that he expresses the hesitation between motion and standstill, indeed between departure and return or choice between natural and urban environments. It seems that precisely this moment of vacillation on the margin of events, this imagining on the border between different spheres simulates the main characteristic of Ercegović’s works.
One of his recent and almost paradigmatic video works, Wind-carousel also supports this statement. In this work the artist virtually leaves the decisions on frame and its content to elementary powers. Camera is fixed on a carousel at Gradac, the high ground above Dubrovnik, which winds randomly spin left and right. Thus the camera – without the artist’s premeditation or plan, reduced only to the definition of the initial supposition – registers surrounding scenes depending only on strength and direction of the wind. At this the photographs present not only visual information about the environment and time registered in chronological and meteorological sense, but also record of natural rhythm and element itself.
The series exhibited on this occasion, just as most of the above mentioned works, was created in Dubrovnik and surrounding areas. Indeed, even the title (People of Dubrovnik) now underlines this determinant role of place and appearance of human figures additionally specifies and enriches the space.
Here the subject is portrait of a figure or group of figures placed in landscape or urban surroundings as well as play of front and background plans. Sometimes these are classical portraits of people who pose for the artist, portraits of faces and bodies of close friends, relatives… Yet these are quite often the scenes shyly “stolen” from the side or from a distance while the blurs of unfocused edges of objects and figures from the first plan often impose themselves upon the greater part of the photograph.
At choosing the motif Ercegović was seemingly more lead by impulse of events than his own decision. In a less visible and certainly less virtual way he was applying the carousel principle, i.e. “moving with the flow of the wind” in order to define the scene and frame. In more fortunate moments he knew how to turn this, earlier mentioned working vacillation into a style value. Thanks to this approach the scenes are devoid of profane, cliché-ridden attraction; they appear, speaking in terms of utility, in all vagueness of their purpose, which gives them a dreamy and melancholic quality. This is also contributed by the fragile quality of focus. The expected resolution is soon rarefied (thanks also to the artist’s persistent use of the greater aperture of the lens) and the scene becomes visually and semantically fragile in risky balance on the edge of reasonable construction and superfluous annotation.
On the occasion of social events, feasts, informal sports competitions and siesta, in ambiences of courtyards or shady rooms, the artist will extensively, even slightly laggardly realise the photographs that are full of local colour, but without persisting in trivial stereotypes. These moments refuse to be fateful, they rather record skirting of purposefulness and promote events under the surface at the expense of those immediately visible. They seldom present punch-line images, jokes or anecdotes. Instead we will notice the effort at search of harmony between people and objects in the moments of intermezzo in daily rhythm, these non-events with humorous elements. Only sometimes Marko will calculate with the profanely intriguing elements (fat, thin, grotesque, exotic), but only when it is about the scenes that – in given climate and ambience that is itself like a stage on which People of Dubrovnik and those who happen to be there find themselves – cannot be avoided. Even then the photographer actually “wastes” the banal-bombastic potential bringing out the dimensions of deceleration and mellowness.
Because Marko Ercegović belongs to the category of those Croatian photographers who favour imagination and standstill and contemplation of landscape, human figure and atmosphere to the dominant conjuncture of hurriedness, variegation and flare. Mildly conservative and inert, nostalgic in technology and medium, promoter of classical reductive black and white register, Ercegović joins those who by their silent expression and choice of themes form an enclave in the times of fireworks’ competition and vehement outshouting. His work occurs on the platform aimed to preserve our ability of calm perception.
Antun Maračić
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Marko Fortunatović Ercegović
Born 1975 in Dubrovnik.
Studied at Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb, Department of Photography Exhibits since 1995. Works with Photography and Film.
Contact:
mercegovic@net.hr
