As we are reminding ourselves that the camera is a machine that simulates the mind, we are trying, over and over again, to discover the course of the thoughts of the one who speaks through this machine.
With Some Cities, as this series of photographs is called, Ivan Arsenijević recorded the marginal beauty of the silent urban “transit scenography” – the forgotten exteriors, deserted crossroads, underground passages, shopwindows… Reminiscent of Eugen Atget’s photographies, Ivan Arsenijevic finds aesthetically dull public spaces and like a surrealist notary reveals to us the beauty of the incidental scenes of modern cities. He looks at the city itself but also at the mental state of its inhabitants who may be caught in an inevitable swirl of discomfort, impatience, loneliness and fear.
As each picture / a photograph / is a certain surface that has a particular meaning, we perceive this series of photos through Arsenijevic’s intention to observe the city as a scene – as a stage. Experiencing the city as the space of social contacts and the space of affiliation, he creates the documents of one reality. The reality is multiple and through photography we become consumers of only one side of the reality caught. In the Some Cities series, the reality that is subordinate to the photographic act and a specifically produced atmosphere, he warns of the uneasiness of the desolate city landscapes, of the potential possibility for the places of the spectacles to evolve into places of conflicts.
The photo of the public city space in this case is without narrative, most often devoid of human presence. Quite the opposite situation has occurred in his photos created in public transport. Each photograph is indeed a sociological document and reveals some correlations in the relationship between the characters, environments, photographers and contexts in which it occurs. Looking at the photos from the entire series Some Cities, we are able to understand the essence of artist’s intentions to introduce photographies of a deserted city landscape together with photographies of public transport rich with presence. Observed together in one series, Arsenijevic’s photographs encourage significantly different notion than when observed separately. In this way, it seems that they reflect a paradox of modern times, the fact that cities with their rich historical heritage and architecture actually become indefinite “transit scenery” for sporadic tourists, while residents of these cities in the context of consumerism and cruel capitalism are “underground”, in public transport, with the only intention of reaching from point A to point B as soon as possible.
The modern urban milieu of the city’s landscape is given by Arsenijevic in a wide view, without referring to the detail, on a close-up plan. Expressiveness is achieved by choosing the appropriate point of shooting, perspective and lights. Light is here of special importance. It is natural and objective, documentary. “Deep” shadows and different tonal values that create the illusion of depths are also noticeable.
Street photography as a special type of documentary photo has its long history. Today, we are witnessing limited freedom of photographers to go out in the streets and document the world around them. If we remember the words Martin Parr’s said a few years ago at the Vision photo fair, that street photography will be banned in five years, if we remember the world wide initiatives for protecting the rights of photographers creating in public areas (eg.campaign “I’m A Photographer Not a Terrorist “), if we know now for several cases where photograpers were accused of terrorism and violation of privacy, we have to wonder if the end of the street photography is near and whether it is yet another paradox of modern times. Photographs taken in the public space have special documentary importance, and the authors share common love for documenting the world around them. In the same way, Ivan Arsenijevic, being aware of the speed with which the world is changing, records these duplicates of reality, giving his own personal stamp to a documentary basis of the photos.