Goran Trbuljak on work of Jasenko Rasol

Jasenko Rasol (1969) is a cinematographer and a photographer. Why is it so important to start by defining Rasol with these two professions, which most people usually equate? First, there are, in fact, important differences between the two professions. To put it simply, the difference lies in the fact that one profession uses moving „live“ images, and the other uses still, motionless images. The array of moving television or film images, documenting a certain event, leads us to search for a story, while a photograph needs just one image to record a defining, irreplaceable moment. Second, and also important in the case of Rasol, is that those two professions differ in education. And he has studied both. He studied cinematography at the Zagreb Academy, and photography at Glasgow University.

He was hired as a cinematographer by several famous world agencies (Reuters, AP) and TV stations (BBC, ABC, CNN, NTV, ORF), and during the war, he filmed reports in Croatia, and in the world. Perhaps this was where he tuned his keen sense for the documentary approach, which he had also previously nourished in photography. After the war activities decreased in the closer regions, and he returned home, he started working as a photographer. Since then, he has been portraying people for cultural magazines, but also for its opposite – a magazine which covers economy.

This type of photographic reporting taught him the discipline of satisfying different client needs. Through his profession as a cinematographer (especially in war situations), and a photographer, he developed his controlled, precise and responsible approach to tasks. Both professions, regardless of potential levity or severity of the task, require a physically and psychologically strong, stable, cool-blooded individual. Rasol possesses all of these qualities, and only now we can come to joint agreement. Whether he's using photography or video images, we are able to define his profession as simply that of a reporter.

However, this is not the end to Rasol’s activities, and while he does work as a high-end professional, which is in the end how he makes his living, some things he does, as the saying goes, for "the soul”. However, he does it with the same amount of seriousness, ambition and professional quality. Regularly, sometimes even a couple of times a year, he stages photography exhibitions. The work he shows in these exhibits is usually of the journalistic, documentary character. It almost always has a theme and is represented in large photography cycles. Some of the work is filmed in exotic and unusual locations for a common citizen.

Collections of over 100 photographs document his travels through Asia, South America, Europe… Even though these are mostly documentary images, there is something about the manner of his presentation – or in the closer inspection of images, which points to other artistic intentions.

For example, in his cycles from Vietnam and Brasil, Rasol exhibits color photographs of people and landscapes in a small format used usually by amateur photographers, who use it so they can easily place images in photo albums.

He will not bring out a few „fascinating“ images, enlarged to equally impressive big formats in order to blind the public, already frustrated by the fact that they will only get to see these exotic locations in photographs. No, Rasol will rather impress us by the quantity of his work, by its detail, persistence and the seemingly cool, almost diary-like documentary form. At this point there is no difference between him as a professional, and a common amateur; these other „amateur“ reports function in the domain of a private, intimate recording, also in the  almost diary-like form.

Actually, only recently, after holding an exhibition of photographs where he is portrayed as a child, Rasol has become clearer to us. The exhibition becomes even more interesting when we know that he, logically, is not the author of these photographs, but that it is his father (it will not be the first time he shows the importance of his father in the process of forming as a photographer). Exhibiting his diary entries along with the photographs, written with an unskilled hand of a child, at the age when he was photographed, it seems as if he clearly revealed his main interest in photography, which up to that point we hadn’t been able to read.

Rasol is interested in documenting, actually, in the small turn towards the story, the narrative, emanating from the numerousness of photographs, their sequence on the walls, and latent emotion. Just as he used this photography cycle to manifest the love for his father, his new cycle (new only to the public, because he's been creating it over the last ten years) shows his love for Irma.

Cindy Sherman used to film herself in various surroundings for her photography cycle, „Untitled film still“, alluding to photographs from Hollywood films. Similarly, Rasol has been photographing his girlfriend for years, in various locations in many world cities, in unusual situations and in equally unusual clothing. Probably not even considering Cindy Sherman or Billy Wilder's „Irma la douce“, in each new photograph he still gives us a new „movie scene”. He constantly offers new reasons to carefully consider each frame, and to reveal some story which is played out between his heroine, and the supporting „actors“in the background.

Each photograph suggests another possible event which might happen next, however each subsequent photograph is not filmed in the same location, rather it is transferred to another side of the world, to another event, and a new story.

Irma is standing on the railroad, in Porto, between the tracks of the tram behind her back, while a driver is talking to a man standing on the pavement. Each detail on the photograph becomes important, even the title of the destination to which the tram is driving. „Infante“is the direction written on the tram, and it becomes key for assembling the story. The word „infante“ encourages us to re-examine the painting by Velázquez, where the royal daughter faces the viewer with a direct gaze, just like Irma on the photograph, and people, doors and reflections on the famous painting make us search for the similarity with the doors and reflections in the tram windows. However, the story can also offer a simple question - what will happen when the tram moves towards Irma (or away from her, deeper in the frame)?

The next photograph on the wall does not reveal it, because it shows Irma in another costume, in a completely different place – in Tokyo, amongst the skyscrapers and Japanese school children, and here we find a completely new story to lead us to new possible events. Next photo: Irma, now in a different costume, another place, with a story behind her back, and our curiosity regarding its sequel. And so it goes for about a hundred photographs….

What Rasol objectively brings to his photographs is a document and a report on Irma's stay in various cities of the world, where she was on tour. These photographs also speak of various possible stories which each of them has the potential to tell.  Third, and perhaps, the most important thing is that this cycle is Rasol's journal documenting the relationship between two persons. She is the main character in his photographs, and he documents her, but also his fears, his loyalty, his love, his strength, and perhaps his suffering, in a symbolic manner - through everything which is visible behind Irma's back, through everything which creates a new story in his photographs.

If previously we said that Rasol is professionally best defined as a reporter, considering his exhibits we can say that Rasol is a reporting his own soul and personal sates.