De Architectura [2011–2014]
The relationship between architecture and photography is more complicated than illustrating architecture with photographs. The subject of the first photograph ever taken was a building, but there seems to be nothing more different – architecture is an exceedingly complex physical and mental space, photography a relatively simple two-dimensional representation. Even so, there are some invisible similarities between them. Both architectural works and photographic images have social significance normally going beyond their artistic potential. The art of both disciplines is only a fraction, however important, of their routine production. Although they belong to the mundane world of utilitarian use, their meaning is abstracted, contextualized and easily modified.
De Architectura is an alternative survey of architecture in Serbia, conceptualized without historical and thematic limitations. It includes private and public buildings; historically significant examples and contemporary vernacular architecture; artistic achievements and architectural kitsch; transitional super-structures and humble dwellings. Although the architectural realm has a direct and immense impact on the everyday life and experiences of its inhabitants and beholders, the architecture in Serbia, for the most part, is a closed discourse marked by new wealth, barren elitism, frustration, bulldozing and mediocre projects. Significant and insignificant, old and new – buildings portrayed here are examples of disparate architectural worlds. Represented together, these photographs may instigate some questions related to: the importance of architecture, the need for relevant historization, gentrification, political history, capital turnover, and above all the always compelling possibility of reading a social moment through architecture.
Mihailo Vasiljevic 2014
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