Vesna Pavlović
- 90s
- archiving
- artist in society
- black and white
- collective memory
- communism
- cultural memory
- decolonization
- documentary
- ideology
- individual memory
- knowledge production
- memory
- memory research
- modernism
- photo-based
- photography
- photographytechniques
- political
- remembrance
- representation
- social engagement
- Yugoslavia
– (1970, Kladovo) is a professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, USA. She examines the evolving relationship between memory in contemporary culture and technologies of photographic image production. Vesna Pavlović: Stagecraft was published in 2021 by Vanderbilt University Press. Awards include 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and 2019 Fulbright Scholar Award.
Portrait photo of Vesna Pavlović, photograph by Kimi Takesue, courtesy of the artist.
Throughout my career, my photographs and artwork have addressed several important issues and questions in contemporary art, including: new modes of documentary photography, photography’s expanded field, the visual translation of historical archives, the relationship of photography to film, and the omnipresence of images in contemporary culture. Vast amounts of existing and newly taken photographs, found and computer-generated, are widely and instantaneously disseminated through social media platforms. My photography challenges these conditions by exploring the traditional repositories of this material such as archives, often left in a state of suspension, forgotten, and at risk of disappearing. I work with projected images which allow me to create photographic environments, in which it becomes important not only what we see, but how we see1. In my installations I turn photographic images into objects by way of their display, mounting, and placement in space, challenging what constitutes the widely understood photographic moment.
My early career in Belgrade, Serbia was heavily influenced by documentary photography and film. The photographs I made during that time depict the other side of war and the ways people coped with hardship in their daily lives in the time of Yugoslav national dissolution2. In the early 1990’s, I collaborated with Women in Black, a group of women who formed a local branch of the international network of women against war. This group began a public, non-violent protest against the regime of Slobodan Milošević, nationalism and militarism, discrimination and violence. I created a series of black and white photographs which conveyed the aesthetic of the group’s resistance and their silent presence in the streets of Belgrade3. The winter of 1993-94 was one of the harshest in Yugoslavia, with record-high inflation. During that winter, in collaboration with writer Srdjan Valjarević, I took one image each day of the winter to produce the Winter Diary, a book project of texts and images, a testament to a generation of young people affected by economic hardships and war4. In 2002, I was the first woman to graduate from the cinematography program at the University of Belgrade. Cinematography studies provided an avenue to explore the relationship between still and moving images.
A single black and white photograph I found in 2012 at the Museum of Yugoslavia initiated a quest for the discovery of my own participation in the long-running stage-crafted performances produced for the former president Josip Broz Tito5. In the subsequent research that constituted the body of work titled “Fabrics of Socialism”, I unpacked this single photograph so as to question the history of post WWII Yugoslavia and present a psychological portrait of the era of cold war, burdened by the photographic representation of socialist propaganda6789. In 2018/19, I spent a year in Belgrade as a Fulbright Scholar where I conducted research for an experimental documentary film “Stagecraft”, informed by the events leading to the decade of the 1990s in Serbia. In my new series of photographs titled “Sites of Memory” I document spaces charged by the politics and history of socialist Yugoslavia10. I am working with archival images from the Museum of Yugoslavia and transforming them via a series of manual and digital interventions. The cut and paste strategies evident in the photographs point to the density of historical information they contain, and to the layering of memories1112.
In Chantal Ackerman’s seminal film “From the East”, the camera moves slowly so as to capture people going about their lives after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, as history literally passes them by. In my photographic installations I remove the curtain (quite literally) to reveal this history and memory, both personal and collective13. I question the role photography plays in remembering history. What are the moments of our collective history that we hold onto, and which parts of it do we forget141516? What role do institutional archives play in the construction of national identity and collective memory1718?
Texts is written in collaboration with Jelena Vesić (2022).
1Image: Vesna Pavlović, Fototeka, 2013–2016, installation view at MAC International 2018, MAC Belfast. Image courtesy MAC Belfast / Photo by Simon Mills.2Image: Vesna Pavlović, Macbeth/ /It (William Shakespeare/Sonja Vukićević, Belgrade, Student Protests in Kolarčeva Street), 1996. Archival pigment print 8.125 x 12 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
3Image: Vesna Pavlović, Circle. The third international conference “Network of Women’s Solidarity Against War”, held in Novi Sad. A vigil in the city square, Novi Sad, August 1994. Gelatin silver print, 1994. Courtesy of the artist.
4Image: Vesna Pavlović, Untitled, Winter Diary. Archival pigment print 8.125 x 12 inch, 1994. Courtesy of the artist.
5Image: Vesna Pavlović, Youth Day Celebration, Yugoslav National Army Stadium, May 25, 1979, 2014. From “Fabrics of Socialism” series. Archival pigment print. Size variable, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.
6Image: Vesna Pavlović, The Archive, 2013. From “Fabrics of Socialism” series. Endura metallic color print, 30 x 38 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
7Image: Vesna Pavlović, Fototeka (Projection Still VI), 2015. From “Fabrics of Socialism” series. Archival pigment print,16 x 24 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
8Image: Vesna Pavlović, Fototeka (Projection Still IV), 2015. From “Fabrics of Socialism” series. Archival pigment print, 16 x 24 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
9Image: Vesna Pavlović, Fototeka (Projection Still I), 2015. From “Fabrics of Socialism” series. Archival pigment print, 20 x 30 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
10Image: Vesna Pavlović, Jugoslavija, 2019. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
11Image: Vesna Pavlović, Protocol, 2018. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival Pigment Print, 30 x 38 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
12Image: Vesna Pavlović, Stadium, 2019. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
13Image: Vesna Pavlović, Diffused Reflections, 2019. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
14Image: Vesna Pavlović, Direction of Light, 2019. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
15Image: Vesna Pavlović, Color Temperature Blue (CTB), 2019. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
16Image: Vesna Pavlović, Color Temperature Orange (CTO), 2019. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
17Image: Vesna Pavlović, Ceiling Systems, 2019. From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
18Image: Vesna Pavlović, La Jetée (After Chris Marker). From “Sites of Memory” series. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
– (1970, Kladovo) je profesorka na Univerzitetu Vanderbilt u Nešvilu. Bavi se istraživanjem razvojnog odnosa između sećanja u savremenoj kulturi i tehnologija fotografske produkcije. Publikacija Vesna Pavlović: Stagecraft (Umeće scenskog predstavljanja) je objavljena 2021. godine u izdanju izdavačke kuće Univerziteta Vanderbilt. Nagrađena je, između ostalog, stipendijom instituta Smitsonijan za istraživanje u umetnosti 2020. godine i Fulbrajtovom stipendijom 2019. godine.
Tokom karijere, moje fotografije i umetnički radovi skretali su pažnju na nekoliko važnih problema i pitanja savremene umetnosti, uključujući nove vidove dokumentarne fotografije, prošireno polje fotografije, vizuelni prevod istorijskih arhiva, odnos fotografije prema filmu, kao i sveprisutnost slike u savremenoj kulturi. Ogromna količina već postojećih i tek napravljenih fotografija, kako pronađenih tako i kompjuterski generisanih, šire se nadaleko i momentalno putem društvenih medija. Moja fotografija osporava ovakve uslove istražujući tradicionalne riznice ovog tipa građe, poput arhiva i zastarelih tehnologija, često u nekom vidu privremene obustave rada, prepuštenih zaboravu i pred rizikom da nestanu. Radim sa projektovanim slikama što mi omogućava da stvorim fotografsku sredinu, u kojoj od važnosti postaje ne samo šta, već i kako nešto vidimo1. U svojim instalacijama pretvaram fotografske slike u objekte načinom na koji su izložene, montirane i postavljene u prostoru, osporavajući ono što je opšte shvaćeno kao fotografski trenutak.
Rani period moje karijere u Beogradu je bio pod jakim uticajem dokumentarne fotografije i filma. Fotografije koje sam načinila tokom tog perioda prikazuju drugu stranu rata i načine pomoću kojih su se ljudi nosili sa teškoćama svoje svakodnevice za vreme jugoslovenskog nacionalnog raspadanja2. Tokom ranih 90-ih sarađivala sam sa Ženama u crnom, grupom žena koje su oformile lokalni ogranak međunarodne mreže žena protiv rata. Ova grupa je otpočela sa održavanjem javnih, nenasilnih protesta protiv režima Slobodana Miloševića, nacionalizma i militarizma, diskriminacije i nasilja. Načinila sam seriju crno-belih fotografija, koje su prenosile estetiku otpora svojstvenog ovoj grupi i njihovo nečujno prisustvo na ulicama Beograda3. Zima ’93. na ’94. godinu, obeležena rekordnom inflacijom, bila je jedna od najsurovijih u Jugoslaviji. Tokom te zime, u saradnji sa piscem Srđanom Valjarevićem, pravila sam po jednu fotografiju za svaki dan zime, sa ciljem da sačinim Zimski dnevnik, književni projekat sastavljen od tekstova i slika, svedočanstvo o generaciji mladih ljudi zahvaćenih ekonomskim teškoćama i ratom4. Godine 2002. postala sam prva žena koja je diplomirala na katedri za kameru Univerziteta u Beogradu. Studije filmske fotografije omogućile su mi pristup istraživanju odnosa između slika u mirovanju i slika u pokretu.
Jedna jedina crno-bela fotografija, koju sam našla 2012. godine u Muzeju Jugoslavije, označila je početak moje potrage za vlastitim učešćem u višedecenijskim isceniranim performansima (sletovima) u čast bivšeg predsednika Josipa Broza Tita5. Tokom istraživanja koje je usledilo, a koje je činilo celinu dela po imenu „Tkanine socijalizma“, raščlanila sam tu jednu fotografiju kako bih dovela u pitanje istoriju posleratne Jugoslavije i predstavila psihološki portret doba Hladnog rata, opterećenog fotografskim prikazom socijalističke propagande6789 .Tokom 2018. i 2019. provela sam godinu dana u Beogradu kao Fulbrajtov stipendista sprovodeći istraživanje za eksperimentalni dokumentarni film „1988“, pod uticajem događaja koji su doveli do decenije 90-ih godina u Srbiji. U novoj seriji fotografija po imenu „Mesta sećanja“, dokumentujem prostore nabijene politikom i istorijom socijalističke Jugoslavije10. Baratam arhivskim snimcima Muzeja Jugoslavije, transformišući ih putem niza ručnih i digitalnih intervencija. Strategije sečenja i nalepljivanja, jasno uočljive na fotografijama, ukazuju na gustinu istorijskih podataka koje sadrže, kao i na višeslojnost sećanja1112.
U uticajnom filmskom ostvarenju Šantal Akerman po imenu „Sa Istoka“, kamera se kreće polako kako bi uhvatila ljude koji žive svoje svakodnevne živote posle pada Berlinskog zida 1989. godine, dok istorija, doslovno, prolazi mimo njih. U svojim fotografskim instalacijama ja uklanjam zavesu (prilično bukvalno), razotkrivajući ovu istoriju i sećanje, kako lično tako i kolektivno13. Postavljam pitanje uloge koju fotografija igra u procesu pamćenja istorije. Koji su to trenuci naše zajedničke istorije kojih se tako čvrsto držimo, a koje njene delove zaboravljamo141516? Koju ulogu imaju državni arhivi u stvaranju nacionalnog identiteta i kolektivnog sećanja1718?
Tekst je napisan u saradnji sa Jelenom Vesić (2022).
1Slika: Vesna Pavlović, Fototeka, 2013. – 2016, pogled na instalaciju, MAC International 2018, MAC Belfast. Zahvaljujući ljubaznosti MAC Belfast / Fotografija Sajmona Milsa.
- 90s
- archiving
- artist in society
- black and white
- collective memory
- communism
- cultural memory
- decolonization
- documentary
- ideology
- individual memory
- knowledge production
- memory
- memory research
- modernism
- photo-based
- photography
- photographytechniques
- political
- remembrance
- representation
- social engagement
- Yugoslavia
