Subotica, 2006-07
Participants: Snežana Bačić, Jelena Buljovčić, Beaza Demiri, Elza Fabian, Kristina Grinfelder, Daniel Homolya, Csaba Lality, Sanela Lebović, Jasmina Ličina, Nebojša Bašić Palković, Adriana Petrović, Nataša Rašović, Stefan Sadovek, Reihana Saiti, Samanta Saiti, Andor Tolcser, Gordan Valent
Coordinator of the workshops: Dorijan Kolundžija
Local coordinators: Csongor Farkas, Robert Vastag, Srđan Radmanić
Workshops in Subotica were realized in collaboration with Youth & Eco Life organization.
Dorijan Kolundžija
There is something profoundly authentic captured in almost every frame of a 15 year old photographer in becoming. As all aspirations towards impressing the viewer give way to the eagerness to hold and observe ones own photo, specific unpremeditated quality gets embedded in it. As the snapshot quality of the photos discloses the fact that no previous experience is defining, or perhaps burdening the photos, a certain amount of honesty surfaces as the more than welcome side-effect.
They are just different.
Communicating utilizing such photos is therefore free from formal aspects of photography and delicately distilled to interests, emotions and personal experiences. What is lost in formal is gained in personal and almost intimate. Encouraging each other to address more complex issues with increasingly personal angle, such communication becomes an intriguing dialogue dealing with complex issues of identity rather than photography analysis. Soon after initial unease of using the camera is overcome, the true focus becomes the storytelling and participation in this dialogue.
Navigating trough this dialog has proven to be quite an endeavor. The identity, both individual and collective, was beyond intricate to isolate and therefore discuss. It ended up forming around a proudly set consensus: This is a group of citizens of their city. Subduing national and ethnic to no more than unconflicting elements of their daily lives, it was Subotica that formed and shaped their territorial and cultural identity.
Furthermore it was Subotica that remained focus of their dialogs using this newly discovered and adopted language of photography they all comfortably spoke.
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Dorijan Kolundžija (1976) graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade, department of applied graphics. In 2004 graduated from Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Masters of Fine Arts, Photography / graphic design.