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.interview with Milos
Srdic(b) on the 27.2.2005 in the Infocenter-Museum of modern art Ljubljana
_ miha(a)
a.Well, for a begining the question is what do you think attracts people
on the photography, what is that magnet? That they are nice, beautiful,
that the composition functions? What attracts you with this medium and
what do you think attracts people?
b.Yes. I think more things. It depends. It could be one thing or something
else. Maybe one can be emphasized, exsposed, maybe one thing, one component
attracts, more then other,.. Me, I don´t know., it depends. One
aspect of photography is of course the froozen moment of reality. But
of course that could not be the only attraction with the photography.
For example on my "Liberator project" that was presented "gUF"
it wasn´t about the froozen moment of reality in documentary sense.
What attracts people? It could be the theme, motive, composition, colouring,
no-coloring, I think that photography today is such a huge and wide conception,
that is very hard to say what attracts people. I don´t know.
a.Fiction or documentary photography. Which do you prefer? Which one is
closer to your concept?
b.I think that this un-documentary, fictionar, controled alias directed
is closer to me. Control of everything, of every detail, of light, composition,
motive. Im moving towards total control, I insists on total supervision
over all the things in the process of taking-making pictures. But of course
I worked and made pictures where there was no control, a snap-shots when
I saw things in a certain moment and I took a picture.
a.And noe about the snap-shots and also about fiction photography. Do
you have any limits, principals what you would never take a picture of?
A motive that you would never take-make?
b.What I would never take a picture of. I don´t know. I don´t
think I have such a princip. Why? I was never thinking about what I would
never take a picture of. Maybe I would have a problem with taking picture
alias with making a photography that would have such a intention which
I wouldn´t approved.
a.Example maybe?
b.I don´t think I would make a portraits for political campains,
that I would... I don´t know.
a.Would you go in war as a photo-reporter?
b.This is very difficult question. It all depents on intention, on conotations.
I sure I wouldn´t make a report for some kind of newspaper,... If
I would go... It´s a hard question and a hard decision. War and
a situations like this are moments where it could be very hard for me
to hide behind my camera and to documented alias it would be very hard
for me to be a pasive individual, observer who is catching the moments.
I think that I rather notice and warn about war and other problems in
society through some other mediums, with some other hidden ways then with
the pictures of children without hand and legs.
a.Are in the project "Liberator" this hidden massages?
b.Well project "Liberator" has a kind of military-political
direction. Rebellion towards quasi democratical regimes, towards great
powers is his working guide. As a concept is "Liberator" a kind
of reaction towards this rissing of militarism, towards peoples blinding
with chliches and stereotipical icons, towards political speeches. Towards
god and democracy as a hidding places for taking wrong decisions. With
me and with this series everything is very visual. On the "Liberator"
I used a soldier miniatures that are alias as a very classical motive,
but more important is a visual form that dominates over a theme, over
a motive. Of course now it´s all an enchanted circle. If you emphasize
certain visual form, you made alias you strengthen her with some elements-arguments,
then also you theme becomes automaticly stronger and certain circle between
form, content and motive happens.
a.Do you in your projects use a historical motives alias art-historical
motives? Do you use documentary images or a images from reality around
you as a startingpoint-startingground for your concepts, your works?
b.You know, to be aware of process like this rarely. There are a lot of
authors that influence me. We´re recepients and we get tones and
tones of informations and all of them influece us in this chaos. But that
I would took a artistbook or apicture of one photographer and has it as
a kind of inspiration, I don`t do it like that. I think that befor this,
I would use as an inspiration something that isn´t in direkt connecting
with the photography and art, something that could be a visual back(start)ground,
something that open an asociations to me.
a.When you work, do you see camera as some kind of superior position?
Also when you do pictures in studio, do you see yourself as superior to
the scene, do you want an absolut control or are you leaving some freespace
for improvisation, mistakes, coincident?
b.I didn´t understand. You said...
a.It´s about the control...
b.I´m deffinitly staring towards control in technical alias technological
way, that means right exposure, developing and making the prints. I want
to have total control, that means that picture, image is not coming out
of some kind of coincidental sequences, out of coincidental happenings,
but that everything is controled. As my professor on academny explaind
that the difference between good and bad photographer is, that good photographer
can repeat the good picture he or she made and the bad one makes thousand
of pictures and then he choose the best out of them.
a.Are you allways satisfied with the results?
b.No. A "Liberator project" was quit a process till perfection.
a.Did you used a lot of negatives? Was there a lot of attempts?
b."liberator project" began with polaroids, then there were
a tests alias the process went on and on. It looks very simple. You made
the scene and you take the picture, but I don´t know. Because everything
is made with macro lenses and because everything must be precise, all
the details and the nianses, all the patience needed, everything made
the process long and hard.
a.Do you know in advance what the presentation form is going to be? Do
you know how you´ll present the finished picture? What is you´re
process? Do you have-use the same process-method all the time?
b.Yes. Same methods are things that follows you through all the projects
you do. You got alias I have ways how to deal with some problems, how
to visualize the idea, but I´m trying to experiment alias every
new project is a experiment of it´s own. I´m avoiding the
same method of knowing in advance how the thing-picture-film would look
like at the end. I´m always leaving some space for as I named it
"a mistake in a method". To make mistakes is a superstructure
of the hole process.
a.If I go back to the negative and control. You were talking about having
total control when making picture, but what about choosing from already
made negatives? Do you maybe or did you sometimes choose the one not so
technical perfect?
b.There is difference between "Liberator project" and the other
projects I work on. "Liberator" was all about macro photography,
small and silver motives(objects), on artifical-digital enlargments. I
wanted technical perfection. As I already said, first I made polaroids
as preview, and as layout for the final form I´ve used big format
diapositiv. With this small silver objects-soldiers I used also their
capability of reflections, their details, the texture, their structure
and also the gelatin photographical fluid in which their were standing.
With the "Liberator" it was happening to me, that I had an idea
and vision about one picture and it came out worse then I´ve expected,
but with some of them something went wrong when making them and they were
better alias I used them. But as said, most of the time I want the perfection
which was already made in my head as an idea alias as a vision.
a.How do you see the difference between working alone and between working
as a director of photography with a film director?
b.That´s a good question. A lot of times happens, that a film director
has alias is founded on one visual image and I as a director of photography
don´t get any creative input from him-her, so I can´t superstructer
the given concept. Some of the film directors I see as a kind of supervisers,
that collects a group of people, co-workers and they then as a selectors
pull out all the best ideas, the quality of selected workers. In recent
times I directed a lot alone, because I can allow me a free way, free
flow, but a lot of things that I do alias direct are basing(dominating)
on pure visual idea, where the directing is not neccesary. I don´t
wish or have the ability alias a knowledge of directing in a sense of
making a film, making drama, creating dialogs,... The things like music
videos allow me to direct alone. I don´t want to say, that I can´t
work with the film directors alias that there is no film director in the
world with whom I could worked, but I must say that in Slovenia I have
some problems with film directors.
a.So in a sense slovenien film directors know too exactly what they wants?
b.Not only that. Not only that they know exactly what they want. Most
of the times I have a feeling, that because of some ideas they have alias
because of him-her to whom I have to adjust, I don´t do the best
I can or could do. And when the thing is finished and I´m missing
some ideas that we´ve insisted on during the process I often ask
myself why, where did we make a mistake. I as a director of photography
am not having problems with making compromises, if I know that they are
in good alias in best for some other things. But if some idea is too much
dufferent from mine or if I don´t see it, then I´m having
problems.
a.How do you see and take the question of technology in your projects?
Digital? Analog?
b.I´m a very analog person. I use digital technology in a sense
of scaning negativ alias film and in a sense of postproduction, printing
and finishing, because there is everything digital this days.
a.So why excatly analog?
b.I think that with the photography film and negativ alias all the technology
that comes with analog way of working is still better then digital one.
With moving images the digital technology is much more similar(resembling)
to the analog one. But personaly I like and prefer the feeling, the texture
that the analog technology is giving, producing by still and also by moving
images. For example I´m still not used to 3D rendering methods in
animation, although they do it quit good now. I´m still used to
and I like more the feeling and aesthetics of drawn, hand-made animation.
I have a kind of aversion, some kind of resistance towards 3D animation.
a.Do you think that there is too much 3D computer animation now? Do you
think that it is to easy and too much manipulated?
b.No, not at all. There is something with the texture of picture, with
the picture alone that I don`t like. But still, we´re adjusting
all the time. When I was young I was listening to punk music and I could
consume the electronic one. But today al that I´m listening is pure
electronic music. But also maybe I don´t have such a problem with
the music, because music is not my professional field of interest. In
a picture, photography I have such a problem, I can´t make a step
towards computer animation. Though I´m recently working on the project
that would be combination of 3D computer animated objects and an analog
film picture alias analog picture is going to be a texture for computer
animated objects. This combination is something a can excapt now. But
I´ve seen a trailer for one computer game couple a days ago and
you notice that a lot of people put their work and time into this project
and the quality and feeling is not in question. I think that soon or later
it will come to this change when computer animation will overflown the
film production and analog way of working.
a.Change is already there. The computer game industry is bigger then film
industry?
b.That´s true. But films are still made in a classical maner. There
is still looking for the best combination between analog and digital pictures,
production, images.
a.Now one classical question. When, why and how did you start taking pictures?
What brought you to photography?
b.The theater and film was always in my family. Also my father had a lot
of cameras and very soon I begin building an interested in that direction.
Then there was fathers dark-room in Belgrade were I was born. In fact
no one force me towards photography. In one moment I was in dark-room,
then in the high school the idea of taking images was more intense, but
I still haven´t had the idea then that I could do something with
that in my life. Then of course I had to decied what to study, where to
go on. I had some thoughts... I can´t say that I got the idea and
the feeling that I want to be a photographer. Everything happend very
spontenious.
a.Do you go to other people exhibitions?
b.Yes.
a.Do you have a feeling that the interest for photography in falling?
b.Hm. Till some point yes. Anyway I think that there is less and less
people in art galleries, where also photographical works are present.
But still the photography as medium is overall and everywhere. In fact
I don´t feel some kind of decreasing of photography, I think that
there is more and more printed and on-line mediums where photography has
more and more opportunities to be present then 15 or 30 years ago. It
is also obvious how alias much more many good printed magazins there is
today. I was in Berlin few weeks ago and there are a lot of papers and
magazines that you can get free and they are living only from advertisment,
but they are also publishing and printing a lot of photography and photography
has a very important place in them. I found such a possibility for photography
good and there are also some ideas in Ljubljana to make and create such
a magazines.
a.Great. Now we´ll type the interview and you´ll get your
to authorized it alais we could also go on with dialog.
b.I have a feeling that we didn´t say nothing concret. You think
we said something concret?
a.I think yes. The question is also what is concret?
b.What could we do with all this?
a.Well you know. There is one quote that always came to my mind and it
goes like this."If I could write I would be a writer, but I can´t
write and I can take-do pictures so I´m photographer."
b.Yes,I know.
a.I think alias to expect that I would come with some genious questions
and you would gave some big and hard theoretical answers is a kind nonsense.
We´re both working in a field of practis and the theory doesn´t
come on the first place. But I still have some questions about the "Liberator
project" alias where do you see the border, the line between theory
and practice, how much do the theoretical text give to you, are they some
startingpoints for your work?
b.I´m very anti-theoretical person. During my years of studying
film photography at the academy in Belgrade we were in touch and we did
some researches in the field of film theory, film studies, but as all
the theory, the theory of photography is not my field.
a.But some concret texts about the "Liberator"? Are this texts
presenting some good feed-back to your work? Are they some points where
you start your next project? Do you use them in your conceptualizing of
future projects?
b.This kind of theoretical respond, a kind of feed-back from somebody
who works in a field of art-theory and went deeper into your work happens
to me with all my independet art projects that I do. Here I´m not
thinking about the spontanious feed-back from normal spectators, but about
theoretical essays where somebody is with the power of arguments judging
your work, where someboy is explaining and noticing about the things and
details in your work, where somebody is taking about the things you as
an author didn´t think of, didn´t expected.
a.Do you them start consciousnessly working from this theoretical points,
from this theoretical notices about your work?
b.Well not really. My independet artistic production is not a huge one,
I don´t have some kind of manifacture, so I also don´t have
a lot of feed-back and texts about my art work. On the "Liberator"
project I become a lot of feed-back, a lot of people told me some things
that I would use for my next projects. "Liberator" in "gUF"
was also my first solo-exhibition in Slovenia, befor that I had one in
Belgrade and in Japan. I don´t do so much of solo art production,
so I really can´t build some system and concepts on the feed-back
I become.
a.For the future where do you see your seld more, as an independet photographer
or as a director of photography in big team work projects?
b.If I´m honest I like both things. Work on a solo-gallery exhibitions
and works and also to be a part of a team on film, video, animation projects.
As said I liked both of ways. Everyway has it´s own advantages.
I always come to the picture, to making and doing pictures, to photography.
Still or the moving one. There is always light, the manipulation with
it, the darknes, composition,...
a.maybe for the end. You said that we didn´t say nothing smart?
What kind of smart think would you like to stress out?
b.What smart think... Well I just think that one I´ve answerd that
I want to have total control and after that I was talking about how I
like the mistakes in the method...
a.Well for me and for us the dialog matters. With "gUF" we wanted
to start a dialog between all of us, that could go on tommorow, aftertommorow,
next month, year,... There are always first things where everything begins,
but we´re all learning, working, developing. After more dialogs
and discussions will shurly lose this feeling that we have to say something
smart and will just start talking, discussion on a higher lever. Milos
thank you for this dialog that we had today.
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