photo-book – YU: The Lost Country

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art, Dragana Jurisic, Dragana Jurisic YU: The Lost Country, photo-book, photography, photos, YU: 'The Lost Country'

Photographs, like memories, are fleeting; they capture a moment in time and frame it forever. And like memories, photographs invite us to imagine, dream and conjure up stories to help form our identities.

The photo book YU: The Lost Country is Dragana Jurisic’s visual account of her search for her own identity. Born a Yugoslav she sees herself as an exile, a wanderer who has no roots since the destruction of the utopia that was Yugoslavia in 1991.

To help her find a path through a country that no longer exists Dragana Jurisic sought the guidance of the British writer Rebecca West. Published in 1941, West’s masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon weaves three separate trips through the Balkans into one complete memory of what the Yugoslav identity was about.

Following in West’s footsteps, Dragana Jurisic captures glimpses of these memories through her lens and recreates a fictional version of a modern day Atlantis. The muted palate of colours and hazy, sometimes a little out of focus, contours add to the sensation of memories once forgotten, now remembered, a dreamlike world just beyond our reach.

Punctuating these images with words, a combination of her own and West’s, Dragana Jurisic allows the viewer to enter into the images and gain an insight into a lost world. And while memories may be subjective, just as the creation of photographs is subjective to the viewfinder of the photographer, the memories become real, an objective representation of something nearly forgotten.

YU: The Lost Country challenges the idea of what defines identity and encourages the reader to rethink what they believe to be true, but it does this in a very delicate, subtle way. This understated approach is also reflected in the sophisticated exterior of the book, its canvas cover is pleasant to the touch, and the elegant design invites the eye to linger and revisit. A small issue is the closeness of the print to the edge of the pages; one or two millimetres would have saved the illusion of toppling off the edge.

Not only is YU: The Lost Country an unusual photo book, as it gives more than just imagery and frames the stunning photographs with words, memories and history, it also resembles a time-capsule that stores lost knowledge for generations to come.

YU:The Lost Country

YU:The Lost Country

 

living with an artist

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art, artists, books, Dragana Jurisic, Dragana Jurisic YU: The Lost Country, Dublin, photography, photos

Over the past week I have been sharing my home with my wonderful friend and gifted photographer Dragana Jurisic. It had been an exciting week for her as her long awaited book YU: The Lost Country was launched, she was part of a group exhibition –  (It’s kind of like) telephone – as part of Photo Ireland and the English Independent Magazine featured her work in it’s weekend supplement.

For me it has been a busy and interesting week as well – for many reasons – and I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. Between writing and appointments I have relished experiencing, first hand, what living with an artist is like.

Lounging in bed for most of the morning seems to be big a part of it, but it’s not lazy dreaminess that keeps the artist trapped between the sheets, its the cozy comfort and  proximity to the plugs attached to the socket in the wall that keep her captivated. Her laptop and iPad balanced on her knees while her fingers hurry across the keys, always communicating, always working, her ears covered in bright-red earphones, drowning out the sounds of the mundane world outside.

Always the good hostess I have provide coffee and breakfast in bed, prepared healthy, hearty lunches and savoured the insightful banter, laughs and creative chit-chat along with my salad dressing.

The afternoon then beckons the artist to leave her retreat and a flurry of showers, ironing and clothing decisions accompanied by a plan ushers the artist out the door and into a waiting world – a mixture of appointments (both work and social),  is a well constructed cocktail that paves the way into the evening which is filled with exhibitions, launches, free wine and lots of networking until late into the night.

After my week living with an artist and witnessing how productive this way of life can be, I am now – even more so than before – a firm believer that nine to five really doesn’t fit all and doesn’t always allow a creative mind to find it’s wings.

Dragana, beautiful inside and out (selfportrait part of the exhibition (It’s kind of like) telephone)

Th Independent Magazine goes all out

Dragana’s beautiful book YU: The Lost Country

getting ready to travel

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Deichtorhallen, Dragana Jurisic, Dragana Jurisic YU: The Lost Country, family, gifts, Hamburg, tea, travel

Next week I’ll be heading off to Germany again. It will be a week filled with lots to do and many people to meet. First I’ll be staying with my Godmother and then I will swap beds and move in with my brother and his family for a few days, to mind the kids and celebrate his birthday.

However the main reason for heading over to Hamburg is that my wonderful friend Dragana will be talking about her exhibition YU: The Lost Country in the famous Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and I am flying over to support her.

So while I am really looking forward to a little trip I am amazed at how much I still have left to do before catching that flight. One thing that has been piling up is the small tower of ‘gifts’ for everyone I’ll be seeing … after all I have been asked to bring lots and lots of tea!

So while I have been writing emails, correcting student assessments and generally trying to clear my desk (and yes it is currently very messy – tidy desk is on my to-do list) my thoughts have been circling my wardrobe trying to figure out what to take with me since half my suitcase will be filled with goodies for others.

I just hope it won’t be too cold … less clothes! But all in all I am looking forward to the coming week, never a bad thing when you can leave your daily trudge for a little while.

some of what needs to fit into my suitcase

Exhibition Opening – YU:The Lost Country

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art, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Dragana Jurisic, Dragana Jurisic YU: The Lost Country, Dublin, Exhibition, Jurisic, photography, photos, Rebecca West, RHA Ashford Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), YU, Yugoslavia

Last night the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA)  was buzzing with activity at the opening of five exhibitions. One stood out for many –  YU: The Lost Country by the talented photographer Dragana Jurisic.

This extraordinary exhibition is a photographic exploration of identity, displacement and memory. Jurisic has a personal interest in these topics as she herself is from Yugoslavia, a county that no longer exist, a home she can no longer return to.

Formed after the first world war Yugoslavia fell apart in 1991, splintering into seven countries, leaving three whole generations struggling to figure out who they where and where they belonged, many deciding that they belonged nowhere.

Since Yugoslavia was, as Mussolini put it so eloquently “…cobbled together in Paris” after World War I, it was always a country that struggled with identity, artificial borders forcing strangers and enemies to become one.

Fascinated by this the Anglo-Irish writer Rebecca West wrote her masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon based on her travels to Yugoslavia and it’s publication in 1941 coincided with the Nazi invasion of the country she had grown to love, even calling it her motherland.

Jurisic used West’s book to retrace her own journey around her lost homeland in an attempt to recreate something that was lost but soon found that the sense of displacement and lost identity was stronger there, than in the country she now lives in.

This shows in Jurisic’s work: ” Photography, contains elements such as fleetingness, which allow it to capture that sense of rootlessness and dislocation with relative ease. Both exile and photography intensify our perception of the world. In both the memory is in its underlying core. Both are characterised by melancholy.”

The result of this ambition journey is the wonderful exhibition YU: The Lost Country , a visual journey into the past and present punctuated by West’s prose and Jurisic’s own words. The attempt to answer the universal question about identity in a very personal way.

And since Jurisic herself follows Roland Barthes’ assertions “that photography is more akin to magic than to art“,  it is no surprise that many of the photos have an otherworldly feel to them and leaves the viewer wondering about their own memories and identity.

Dragana Jurisic YU: The Lost Country

September 05, 2014 – September 26, 2014

RHA Ashford Gallery