Photo exhibition Slide operator
Location:
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Galerija Makina / Pula-Pola
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Dates:
- 12.10. - 15.11.21
Contact:
- Galerija Makina
- fotohass@gmail.com
About the event:
Author: Dejan Štifanić
In the photographic jargon, a slide means a film slide, dias, or simply a film positive. In the world of analog photography, this type of film, most often in colour, was considered the highest quality material for recording light.
Even today, in some of its aspects, it surpasses digital images in its density, color intensity, and warmness. Or with that unknown “something” that film simply has. As my friend Davor Sanvincenti says: I like film because I can lick film. Pixels, I cannot.
Film positives were especially popular in the seventies and eighties and widespread in use amongst professionals and amateurs alike who returned from trips, family gatherings and such with these slides and projected them in their homes. The most famous projector, even today, is Kodak's Carousel model, which I use in this project as well.
In this exhibition, I used my own slides, but also slides of strangers, which I bought at various flea markets and through newspaper and online advertisements. The idea of the Slide operator was to reinterpret the existing images by (mis)treating the films with different chemicals, colours and other substances, then inserting them into the projector, projecting them onto the paper and finally taking the photos in the moment I considered crucial for the final work which you will see at this exhibition.
I don't think it's appropriate for the author to speak on the metaphysical aspect of these photographs, however, the forces of known and unknown, the sediment of personal history, experience in the craft and my own attitude towards art, photography, society and the time we live in were undoubtedly present in the process.
This exhibition is about me, but in some way, I believe it is an exhibition about all of You as well.