A single point of view will always restrict our perceptions. There seems to me a great, big, beautiful world out there, and we are hemmed in. Don’t you want to get out and see a bigger space, a bigger picture? I think we do.
David Hockney
When looking at enlargements by Ivan Arsenijevic from left to right, the way I am used to, the way I read, it makes me discover wider space, wider image at the very end. And I know that the largest and the widest image is the one, if perceived as the starting point and basis for the other two, which was made first. Formally, they were all taken at the same time, for – it is a single image.
In the series of photographs entitled “Blow-Up” Ivan Arsenijevic turns one photographic note into three images. At one end of this string is a large and wide image and enlargement is at the other. In the middle is what could be encountered when travelling from one end to another.
Ties achieved by taking photographs, inevitably from a single point of view, are constant in its form of presentation. Relations between three images, always different, are what Ivan Arsenijevic’s work make so interesting. The simplest and certainly the most obvious way of reflecting established relations could be comparing of two endpoints of most conspicuous contrast – enlargement and long shot. While in some cases enlargement underlines what long shot shows, in others it becomes the complete opposite turning almost empty square into an image of a city hustle and bustle; crowds into a moment of one person focus; the scene of tranquility into a picture suggesting deep inner turmoil; an intimate moment into an event for the public; impersonal commercial into a very personal story; image of those who are symbol for safety into terrifying threat, pain into humor; the secret and hidden into something publicly displayed.
One should not overlook the role of the central part in the triptych, so different from the usual power of the centre confirmed by the centuries of art practice. It is not necessarily the central point of travelling between two points, a resting place, guidepost either giving the direction from enlargement to long shot or vice versa. Neither its role is to alleviate the conflict between two opposite sides. Although we cannot say that it doesn’t do all of the above. Sometimes closer to the one than the other image and sometimes equally distant from both, central image builds its relations with the other two equally strong, diverse, and interesting the way the other two endpoints build with each other.
The photographic medium itself doesn’t care what is important and what’s not. So, if you pointed at something you think is important it’s going to register all the stuff, unimportant stuff around it with just the same precision and fondness.
Peter Galassi
I have never dared to try to find out the way the images in the serial collection “Blow-Up” have been made. The question that does not look for the answer is if the large and long shot image is made with a certain enlargement within itself. Or if the enlargement is to be found out subsequently by analyzing the large image? Or if each of the large images has a few enlargements of its own, and the right one is to be found by the artist? Or…
Not only do I think that the answer to any of these questions is unnecessary, but I also think it is important that there is no answer just as there is no matrix by which anyone but the artist can determine what is to become enlargement. Finding important things is a creative process whether it takes place while looking through the lens or after the record is made.
If you don’t take time to look, you’ll never manage to see anything.
Paul Ouster
Series of photographs “Blow-Up” clearly relies on the Michelangelo Antonioni’s film with the same title where enlargement of photography and reflecting one of its parts, in the long shot of the invisible, is crucial for the story.
In addition, camera line, which in each triptych comes closer or drives away, makes additional connection with the movie – art inseparable from the photography.
Another parallel I would like to draw, when talking about “Blow-Up”, is that with the movie “Smoke” by Wane Wang and Paul Ouster.
What these two movies have in common is accidental photographic record of the moment directly connected to the crime. But while in the first one the photography is what proves the crime, in the latter, when inconspicuous but very important detail is discovered, it leads us to the sentimental voyage to the past and memory, and has no importance for the crime solved long ago.
Connection to the first movie emphasizes the enlargement. Connection to the second highlights the viewing. And while in the first case it is about technical procedure, in the latter it is about stream of consciousness intertwining with the strong emotions. Viewing, searching and finding, discovering and establishing relations go beyond the enlargement, both as the process and the outcome of the process. It is, with no doubt, the reason why Ivan Arsenijevic’s taking images in serial collection “Blow-Up” is still ongoing.