E V A P E T R I Č
PHOTOGRAPHY by EVA PETRIČ
BLACK & WHITE​
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Gr@y Matter – Language of Shadows, photography series
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In my project Gr@y Matter – Language of Shadows I explore the communication abilities of shadows in representing emotions and being building blocks of emotions. I borrowed the periodic table of elements from the natural sciences and created the periodic table of shadowed emotions, visualized with my »shadow« photographs.
Shadows and emotions have both a lot in common: we all have them, acknowledging this or not… and regardless of our culture, gender, social position, education… Both shadows and emotions are odorless, tasteless, non-touchable – are thus immaterial, yet they are ever present, and they accompany us always in all-ways. Both are thus a kind of equalizer, denoting that we belong as well to a community of shadows…
My periodic table of shadowed emotions is contained in my book of the artist: »Gr@y matter – Language of shadows« of 1.215 pages creating a conceptual work of this body of thought. For this project I received the prestigious Swiss Grant Vordemberge Gildewart Award in 2010.
COLOR​
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An Echo … A Stain
The light catches the figure, the figure catches my eyes, my eyes catch its shadow, and the shadow sneaks into my camera only to explode in the dark room. The shadow becomes the figure and the figure becomes the shadow of the shadow. The shadow of the shadow catches my eyes, my eyes catch the light, and the light catches the figure in motion, leaving behind a trail of shadows.... At other times colors hide the shadow and expose the figure and sometimes the figure and the shadow join back together to tell a story.
For me, my work is about telling a story, exposing the defined and the undefined, the obvious and the hidden, the figure and its shadow. I use the light inside the dark room to free the shadow from its figure, and I use pink, blue, green, yellow and orange in the light outside the dark room to free the figure from its shadow. No longer in a war of tug and pull, each is granted a life of its own. In their own space on the wall, they wait for me to join them back together, a story they offer in return.
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VISUAL APHORISMS​
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Shadows&Puppets
Shadows&Puppets – visual aphorisms - a series of staged photographs resulting from performance like rituals in various environments, which are aiming at overriding the overall present clichés and are reaching to emotions buried underneath.
Nowadays emotions are more or less replaced by easily attainable clichés, instantly expressed visually with color photographs. By accentuating them and at the same time counteracting them with echoes of clichés in the form of black and white shadows, my aim was to create visual aphorisms - to overturn the cliché and with a black and white shadow functioning as a catalyst induce, or better said; re-induce in viewers a real emotion.
As catalysts I use series of shadows from my book Gr@y matter - the language of shadows. The main protagonist of my color staged photographs is a puppet, unaware of its shadow - the real emotion which pulls the strings of the protagonist making it a puppet.