Bojan Mucko on work of Domagoj Blažević

Domagoj's photographic opus is defined by one constant: a daily record filled with close friends, constant transitions, chance encounters, and irreplacable near-misses.

Domagoj’s audience has until recently been specifically targeted – selected by clicking on certain contacts in his Gmail account. This is a specific method of presenting photography, which the author entitled “e-mail story”, and which occurred spontaneously, in electronic communication with his friends. After a trip or when he was feeling inspired by his everyday non-routine, Domagoj would usually send us his photographs by e-mail; they were conceptually framed in a story and incorporated his poetry – representing his experience and trying to draw us in the visual-linguistic textualisation of his everyday. (The attachment would usually include a piece of Domagoj’s melancholy.)

In July of 2009, Domagaj introduced his photography to the public, in a way which is perhaps, completely opposite of previous intimate targeting of his friends’ e-mail inbox: the series entitled Tranzicije (Transitions) was shown on billboards by the entrance to the Student Center. “Tranzicije” is a cycle of psychological portraits of friends placed in a surreal context of Zagreb urban landscapes, and by exhibiting intimate portraits in form of billboards – in the place of commercials – the artist questions the relationship between contemporary photography and commercial media, critically examining meeting points of artistic and commercial aesthetics.

Besides Tranzicije, Domagoj's photography is here represented with two further projects: Corner stories and Almost close. All three projects represent atypical detachment from his usual, spontaneous, diary-like documentation of the everyday. While Tranzicije deal with the liminal position of portrayed individuals, enabled by familiarizing with their biographic background, the subjects from photographs of the other two cycles are unknown passers by. While the portrayed friends in the Tranzicije cycle are intentionally brought to carefully selected, surreal locations, the passers by from the second two cycles accidentally find themselves in front of the camera.

Despite differences, all three cycles have several important, joint characteristics. First, it is the context of the exterior, the streets of cities where Domagoj's photography takes place – mostly belonging to Zagreb and New York. The second is loneliness, isolation of characters. The city in his photographs is a city of lonely flaneurs, whether the subjects posing are his friends or he is photographing passers by, unnoticed.

Regardless of how close he gets to portrayed friends or unknown passers by with his lens, Domagoj seems to insist on distance. Even when, as is in the cycle Tranzicije, his friendship with the portrayed persons allows entrance, and communication, he records a missed gesture, he searches for absence in the gaze. Even when he is observing people meeting, as in Corner stories, he records a mistake, he interprets interaction as a near miss. Even when he remains unnoticed, as in Almost close, and passers by become more open for an intimate portrait by entering the frame, he photographs them blurred and ignores the offered invitation...