OV PUBLISHING

BORKO VUKOSAV, GRAD (2017/18)

Borko Vukosav returns to Dubrovnik (also referred to as Grad [Town] by the locals) as an observer who recognizes and records the routes of his own spatial embeddedness. The city where he once lived becomes visually dissolved in the process of encompassing manifold intertwined relations between the photographer, the environment, fellow citizens, temporarily fixed marginal public spaces and hotel interiors. 

The photographs and the exhibition set-up are suggestive of a walk through the city in which the author articulates an intimate rhythm removed from the usual tourist perception of the life of the city. By shifting landscapes and ambiences Borko reveals the routes of his movements through the urban fabric. His gaze does not rest on the expected and familiar representations of the city, but negates the visual commodification of space. The places he takes notice of seem to be temporarily displaced from the current spatial and temporal context, and the viewer is unable to accommodate them in his or her expected idea of the city. We are also called upon to perceive the author’s urban embeddedness as an invitation to discover the space of his everyday life.

Borko relates his sensory experience of the city through a carefully curated series of photographs of the environment (intersections of the forest, the urban environment and the sea shore), the limited and distanced interactions with individuals he meets while taking a walk, and temporarily silenced and frozen tourist interiors. The slow pace of the city is also reflected in the photographs, which offer an alternative visual construction of the city which is not exclusively seen as a tourist destination. The appropriation of the visible is uncertain since Borko does not allow for a more specific identification with the documented space. The seemingly unrepresentative places are in fact the basis of the author’s narration about the invisible city, told in the off season and devoid of the dominant spatial visual codes.

Borko Vukosav, Grad
OV Publishing 2017/18
Photography Association Organ Vida, Zagreb, 2018
Text: Lea Vene
For the publisher: Marina Paulenka
Translation: Tihana Bertek
Design: OAZA
Print: Kerschoffset

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