GRAIN-19 is my new series of photographs featured as the first artwork at the new online exhibition project of the Museum of Fine Arts in Split entitled A view from the Inside which presents artists reflecting upon the Covid-19 pandemic on the Museum Instagram and Facebook profiles.

I selected photographs with hidden human figures from my archive of analogue images depicting the architecture and landscapes of Split. Through reframing, i.e. enlarging details from the original photographs, the human figure emerges, mostly isolated and absorbed in solitary activity. Unlike the sharp first versions of the photographs, the newly created images display the visible grain structure of the photographic film, which gives them a “marginal,” almost unacceptably intimate and vulnerable quality.

The creation of a new image from an existing photograph represents a return to the origins of photographic thinking—the framing of the observed and the construction of the scene—pointing to the possibilities of choice within a moment, to the freedom of decision-making. “Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation,” wrote John Berger in 1968.

Through such processes, my focus turns precisely to these questions of freedom and choice in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also more generally to the anthropocentric conditions that have undoubtedly led to this crisis and to other anticipated catastrophes. The question of the cost of human dominance over the environment briefly surfaced in mainstream discourse, made tangible by human and economic losses, as well as by restrictions imposed by state apparatuses that threaten to become normalized.

By selecting locations with deferred tourist potential, I wished to recall certain values that require continuous care: the preservation of natural and cultural resources, infrastructure, public healthcare, and social services. We must return to the idea of a city oriented toward providing the conditions for work and living, toward its own sustainability.

LIST OF WORKS:

• Bambina glavica, protected landscape and unresearched archaeological site in the Marjan Forest Park / photographed in 2015
• Coast near Villa Dalmacija in the Marjan Forest Park, a complex that in 1949 became the residency of Josip Broz Tito and still remains closed to public / photographed in 2016
• Ambasador Hotel designed by Josip Kodl, Vojin Simeonović, Helen Baldasar and Emil Ciciliani, built in 1937, demolished in 2019 to enable the building of a larger hotel complex at the site / photographed in 2015
• Pomgrad skyscraper designed by Vuko Bombardelli, built in 1963, currently houses the Centre for Social Welfare / photographed in 2014
• Residential skyscrapers in Glavičine (Table) designed by Stanko Fabris, built in 1963 / photographed in 2014
• Firule Hospital by architect Zoja Dumengjić built in 1969 / photographed in 2014
• Residential building S-3/1, Split by architect Frano Gotovac, built in 1973, 17-storey-building known as Krstarica / photographed in 2015
• Križine Hospital (former Military Hospital) by architect Antun Ulrich, built in 1965, presently used also as a Covid Hospital / photographed in 2015
• Residential skyscrapers in Spinut by architect Ivo Radić built in 1968 / photographed in 2015