Ješa Denegri on work of Ivan Posavec

You could often hear a remark that looking at photographs of most Yugoslav photographers; you could hardly get an appropriate image of the way of life in this region. The reasons offered for this state were tendency for over-aestheticizing, conscious avoidance of facing the reality in crisis, or the inability to face burning issues. However, from time to time, certain individuals and lesser known groups appeared, and they were able to bring to light some moments of this reality, although it proved hard to push this representation beyond mere fragments. However, in their defense, we can say that the picture of the world today cannot be more than an image made from individual particles. The recent exhibition by Ivan Posavec in CEFT, Gallery of the City of Zagreb, showed that this does not necessarily have to be the case. Here’s finally a photographer who makes images which stream life, the kind which we can recognize in our own surroundings, and here's also a photographer who is sufficiently refined and professional, that his pictures never serve as mere anecdotes, but rather as visual records, representing the whole of an artist's "world view."

In order to achieve this, Posavec had to go through several schools, ranging from the official(the Academies in Zagreb and Belgrade), and the practical, through his work for various newspapers, especially student papers like Polet and Studentski List, or a magazine with a high degree of media presence such as Start. Apart from his education and practice in photography, Posavec's life experience, showing in his photographs, has determined the range of his photography today. He notices things that other people will simply walk next to; he perceives them in various places and occasions, describing a wide range of scenes and motifs.

Posavec was one of the artists in the Polet photography circle, however he did not make a typical „Polet-person“. While most of the Polet artists were focused on representing their own generation, the world of youth and entertainment in the vein of popular culture, Posavec was attracted to other areas, especially the world on the margins of a big city, and the rural world; in other words, a folklore world devoid of its folklore, a world often very coarse and harsh, common and vulgar, a world which has long since become representative of these amorphous spaces, which are neither completely rural nor urban, where the tradition of patriarchal life has largely been lost, and another tradition, that of a modern, urban life, has not yet completely formed. However, such as they are, these spaces are still filled with something authentically alive, and Posavec knows how to use it to extract a magnitude of memorable images. The photographs show that these are surroundings he is a part of, where he can move with ease and gladness, and for which he possesses a special level of understanding and feeling. It is a world to which he is attracted to, but for which he also carries a certain amount of aversion. This can be concluded from the many exaggerations in his photos, the many drastic images which permeate his scenes: He does not attempt to „dress things up“, rather he exposes, he points to the realistic, even if the realistic turns out to be embarrassing, even morbid. Posavec’s photography is a certain type of a social journal from the area which covers Zagreb and surrounding areas (sometimes he photographs Dalmatia and Slovenia, very rarely other locations.) His photography is so typically „Zagrebian“, not so much according to the themes, but according to the mentality, a certain type of very unsentimental humor, a kind of subtle irony, in short, a specific jargon for which Davor Matičević cleverly, but also accurately said, that it lives in the “clash of slang and the village curse”.

Just as slang does not represent common and natural speech, but a certain type of stylized expression, Posavec does not always make documentary photography, rather his photography is at times "staged; he is photographing a constructed scene, which only temporarily seems as if it was accidentally discovered and realistic. It is a type of metaphoric photographic speech: The display can be read in various different ways, it can have multiple meanings, and it can possess subtext, visible only from close and careful inspection. Irony remains, as that additional fluid which encompasses most of the displays and gives them the taunting level of ambiguity. Posavec sometimes wishes to mock people and events surrounding him, but in order to avoid being completely direct about it, he uses the camera to extract from reality only that which is photographically obvious (photogenic), compared to what is photographically common.

There is an interesting photo by Posavec, which illustrates this provocative role of the camera, as a witness to the selective, but also very often, the unwanted gaze: While a pair of youths is intimately talking, a young man is leaning behind their backs, showing his obviously angry face to the camera in the hands of a photographer. This peculiar photo seems to pose the following question; does the photographer own rights to everything he meets in his surroundings? While recording, does he not commit some type of "photographic sweet violence", which is in no way unpainful?

Posavec seems to have no scruples regarding this:  He would probably answer that the photographer, like any other reporter is allowed everything in the name of the public nature of the media he uses. Modern photographer – Posavec, obviously shares this opinion - he is someone who has the right to claim somebody's intimate space, but should not be angry if he should meet resistance, even if he has to take an insult.

Posavec cherishes the character of a modern photographer who has the audacity to bud into all kinds of business: various everyday events, the lives of others, political gatherings and ceremonies.  He enters equally public and obscure places, he wants to use his camera to witness what is being said and what is not being said in the society. He does all of these things as a reporter who meets events coming to him in the never-ending stream of life, but also as a formed artist, who uses these numerous individual events to build his own world view.  Truth be told, this is not a view where he "looks back in anger" at the world, rather, it is a view completely devoid of sentimentality.

First time published in the magazine Foto-kino revija, Belgrade, 1985.