Tag Archives: photo-book

photo-book – YU: The Lost Country

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in art, photography

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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

YU:The Lost Country

YU_book3 YU_book2

 

Neither – Kate Nolan’s beautiful new photo-book

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in art

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1Neither_Nolan-572x720Neither, a self-published photo-book by Dublin based artist Kate Nolan, is an exploration of the story of Kaliningrad. Told from the female perspective, Neither is unique in that it isn’t about the past or the future, nor about the present, but it is a closely woven tale somewhere between fact and fiction, documentation and dream.

The carefully selected photos show women of Kaliningrad and their homes, workplaces, and the streets of a city that seems forgotten and somewhat lost. The words accompanying these beautifully lit images are handwritten memories, hopes and tall tales that the women themselves have chosen to share.

2Neither_Nolan-720x480 The gifted Irish photographer Kate Nolan has succeeded in entering into a world, very different from the one she knows, finding personal stories of strangers and making them universal.

For many the city Kaliningrad is an unknown entity, but this once beautiful Hanseatic town played an important role in central European history.

Kaliningrad once was the most easterly German City, after WWII it became the most westerly part of Russia, even if it is completely cut off by land.

Nestled in between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea, this once proud Prussian settlement was completely isolated during the cold war, and even now is often forgotten by motherland Russia.

3Neither_Nolan-720x480This fragile position that Kaliningrad is in filters down into the perception that the women in Neither have of themselves and their lives. This first generation of post-Soviet women, no matter how strong, independent or modern, struggle to figure out what their identity is: not quite European, but neither fully Russian.

Designed by internationally renowned Dutch designer SYB, Neither, is a true organic collaboration between the photographer, designer, and the subject matter, the women themselves.

6Neither_NolanAs you enter into the story, words open up your eyes to the situation and thoughts that surround the portraits and landscapes further within. And you are left with words, memories and descriptions from 1945 that the first Russian women of Kaliningrad have left behind in the local archives, echoing their modern day counterparts.

Neither is a beautiful piece of art, one that, like Kaliningrad’s famous son Immanuel Kant, demands your attention and leaves you with thought provoking ideas. A collector’s piece both fragile, like Kaliningrad’s forgotten daughters, but enduring like the stunning photos it holds within.