Conversation with Marina Viculin

Marina Viculin, senior curator at the gallery Klovićevi dvori, has been working on a cycle of photography exhibitions under the title Snapshot, from June 2004. In her own words, she has organized more than 30, less than 40 photography exhibitions so far. This was more than a good enough reason for us to talk to her.

One of the things you say in the introduction part of the web page for the Snapshot exhibition cycle is:

"... What really interest me most in photography is recording a gaze. A gaze, as a type of a short and unique visual thought. This thought cannot be expressed in any other medium due to its immanent visuality.
I'm interested in photography as a contingency, and a form of visual thought which is not made to express a concept. In photography, which is not a medium for a thought construction, but the gaze itself.
The procedure of fast reaction/shooting is closer to the essence of photography..."

Personally, as a photographer, I am irritated by speed. To me the essence of photography is presence and letting go.
What I'm most interested in photography is behind the gaze. To space the gaze and then shoot.
My question is, does photography necessarily capture anything? Most of the time, I have the feeling that photography is caught in various contexts in which we observe it. How does that sound to you?

Photography in any case is something which is elusive, or I would say that I am interested in recording that which is slipping away. Photography offers the possibility to records rifts in time, and I suppose sometimes this could be due to the fact that it uses expositions which are shorter than a blink of an eye.
Will it sound weird if I say that I often feel that we have no idea what photography actually is. It seems to me that photography sometimes (when it succeeds) captures a level of the world which is usually very hard to isolate, and therefore show. And photography shows it.
It would suit me to describe it with your idea about the photograph behind the gaze. The space the gaze and then to shoot! So beautiful! And convincing. This is the photography which I am interested in.

Sometimes I tried to research if it’s about the very short slots of time when the shutter is letting the image go through. And I think that photography seriously records something we rarely see. And we know it very well.

If we are being completely honest with ourselves, we'll remember that even in some unimaginably dark and dramatic situations there were some unusual moments of complete happiness. We repressed then out of some kind of shame, we forgot them because emotions and fears of the neighboring moments were too big or too strong.

We forgot them because they went against what is accepted and expected. We rejected them even though it was only because of these moments we managed to live through some tough stages in life. Well, these are the types of moments which photography can preserve in its 1/50, 1/300, 1/1000 portions of space-time!

When you select photographs and authors to represent in your Snapshot exhibition cycle, what exactly are you looking for/finding in these photographs? What is the link between all photographs you've displayed so far?

This if of course a question which I often ask myself.

And when I could answer it in words, perhaps the whole cycle would be pointless! Judging by your question I optimistically read into it that you yourself recognize the connection between the authors and work that I choose. Well, I have no way to express this precisely, except with the cycle itself. Just as you can never express directly what is it you photograph.
What I'm interested in the Snapshot cycle, is first of all not photography, rather what I'm looking for is very often exposed in photographs.

I'm attracted to disclosure, going through the ramp, climbing behind the theater to the stage. Blending between the photographer and the model, between me and you, and all in the function of painting the space in between.
Photography is then created in a sort of unexpected harmony of the rational view and kinesthetic knowledge of the body. It is born from movement and can record experienced corporal cognition. It's quite an unexpected trait considering the character of the frozen picture.

How much do you see photography as a representation of the realistic moment? Personally, I always see it as an image which has its own independent reality. What it shows is simply what it shows.
In the introduction to her new novel The History of My Family, Ivana Sajko writes:

”I wanted to show you that there are countless ways to talk about facts. None of them is true...”

This is exactly what photography does. Taking that into consideration, I'm trying to record and show something.
It seems to me that the world of the photograph does not exist anywhere else, but in the photograph itself.

I have problems determining that which could be called a realistic moment.
How much does a realistic moment last? And whose reality is it?
Well, I'm close to the idea that the photograph carries its own reality. And not only that, it is so powerful that it takes over our sense of reality, and we remember only what we've seen in the photograph, and not what we've actually experienced.
Are we talking about stopping? Photography is a contingency, the event is sequenced, it's stripped of the dimension of time and sound. But then I've discovered in many places that through the medium of photography we actually recorded time! What can I say?

Igor Kuduz and Marina Viculin

Would you make divisions in contemporary Croatian photography, and if so, what would they be?

I wouldn't. Some photographs interest me more than others, but this also changes. Divisions are made so we can understand each other more easily, so we can know in which drawer they are placed. They are really an auxiliary tool, they shouldn't be taken at all seriously. Divisions, I think, are quite unimportant. But sometimes they help...

Do you take photographs?

I started to take photographs again this winter, on a trip to India, and I liked what remained captured in these recordings. Photography points out with unmistakable precision what you are like inside at the moment of pressing the trigger.

You've organized many photography exhibitions in the past years. Do you perhaps have an impression of what do contemporary Croatian photographers record, generally speaking? Are you able to say that you've gotten a certain feeling from all those photographs you've seen and written about?

There are people who know what they are doing in contemporary Croatian photography. There are photographers who know why they pick the position they are recording from, and who understand the significance of their choice. It's a job worthy of attention. The thrill which such a job carries with it, is not related to the represented motif, its action comes from the experienced. It causes elation because it is true.

Can we call it honesty? The awareness of who I am when I'm pressing the trigger becomes immanent in the moment when human life is at stake – in war frames, in surges of tidal waves. But the question is always there in each frame, in each millisecond.
The Photographer is, as one of our photographers would say, a person who's stuck a type of device to their face! And this device has an angle, has a limited eye view.

What do you think would be good for the development of Croatian photography? To start a magazine, open a museum of photography, at least one private gallery which would show and present photography?
Generally, how would you evaluate the state of our contemporary photography – and by that I mean the entire infrastructure?

Should we try to finance artist photography projects like others do? Through museums, exhibitions, state and city competitions.
Should we publish books?
There has been a shift forward in the last ten years, but it's moving very slow. Ten years ago nobody bought photographs as wedding gifts, today it's done, but rarely.
We need everything: a magazine, and a museum, and a gallery. And a good web page...

When did you organize your first photography exhibition? How did it all start?  :)

It started one afternoon when after many years I exchanged two honest sentences with Ivan Posavec on the street in front of his house in Bogišićeva. To my question if he still shoots, you know for his own sake, he answered with honest wonder in his eyes: ”Well, of course, how else would I survive... ”

This woke me up. And took back all my fascination with the dark opening of the lens. This is how it started sometime around the year 2000. And it hasn't stopped since. After all our joint projects, I'm still very excited at what he does. I'm rarely drawn to something like that.

Ana Opalić
Zagreb, May 2010.