Berlin, 28 June - 26 July 2008




Stanko Herceg presents his photographs at the exhibition 'Blow Up / Blow Down' in the Linienstrasse 113 Gallery in Berlin.

Stanko Herceg was born 1964 in Zagreb.
Graduated from the Academy of Drama Art, Department for film and television photography. Regular external lecturer at Studies for design at the Faculty for Architecture, subject Photography and film.
Exhibits at solo and team exhibitions.
Director of photography in several motion, short, documentary and experimental films, takes part in domestic and international film festivals, member of Croatian association of film photographers, the Croatian Association of Artists and Croatian community of independent artists.

'Many years ago, a photographer became the hero of a film story. While enlarging his photographs, he accidentally discovered what had happened in a prosaic situation. But, furthermore, that character – a smug fashion photographer from Antonioni’s Blow Up, finds himself in a situation where he begins to doubt the worthiness and objectivity of the physical world envisaged in a unique and nowadays inspiring way. An ironic relation towards the seen, towards events from the 60s and banalities like smashing guitars on stage and a special interest for interior decoration (and not human relations), which are the properties of the aforementioned motion picture, are the starting points of Stanko Herceg’s photo series Blow Down.

It is mainly about a play on words, about the inversion of work on photographs to which the mentioned film is dedicated. Stanko Herceg starts from another position – he diminishes the seen and offers to our view small-format (24 x 36 mm) works in black and white and in colour taken with an analogue camera. The quality of the photographs is ordinary, the image does not lose its conviction and meaning and it seems that the intention is to motivate the viewer to a focused view that is reminiscent of the “delayed” view seen in the viewfinder of the camera.

To what degree does the minimised image influence perception and in which way does this perception change depending on the relations created within the exhibition space? Perhaps for a moment we can “be taken” by the author’s words that the photographs serve no purpose, but to be true, the images that we identify with difficulty were taken at some – for the author important – places. By their composition and meaning they are mostly determined by relations recognised in nature and especially by those places where nature and architecture collide. “Architecture is a part of nature”, claims Stanko Herceg, explaining how everything that has been brought into nature throughout time becomes its integral part, a determinant that helps to define relations, ask questions.

What do we actually see? Some more or less everyday scenes, interesting shadows, cracked and run-down walls, architectural details from some earlier periods. We actually have the opportunity to partially follow the path of Herceg’s view, his focus on places that are difficult to locate because they have some common, already seen characteristics, while at the same time they are special. Each of these places possesses a character given to it mostly by man; the constructions of these territories conquered by Stanko’s lens possess a cultural identity in which – in the context of the exhibition – our relationship towards many questions linked to culture is reflected.

What are these places? We strain our view, trying to “capture” some well-known detail, but something always eludes us, does not want to be patterned or become part of the perception system. Constructed as statements of individual identity, the photographs from the Blow Down series are archived notes of discovered territories. They are notes of a physical world that do not burden it at the same time with reconstructions of the author’s pilgrimages. We do not come to learn anything more about them than that what is – seen.

Everything we see is possible and real. The photographic technique in this case helped in achieving pictorial values, without the use of any special means. The beauty of the image is in its ordinariness, in the everyday that we reach with a little effort by accustoming ourselves to the narrow format in which, in essence, nothing is lacking.'

Text by: Sandra Krizic Roban
The exhibition remains open till 26th of July.

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Linienstrasse 113
10 115 BERLIN
T: +49 30 275 951 23
info@linienstrasse113.com
www.linienstrasse113.com

WEDNESDAY - FRIDAY 14 - 19H
SATURDAY 12 - 18H