Dear Danilo,
I have the impression that our dialogue throughout has been probematicised by one or another form of misunderstanding and misreading of one another and possibly of ourselves? If that is possible? I mean I believe it may be for me, to misunderstand others and myself, sometimes perhaps too easily. And you? Maybe?
Our photos. I was thinking about that back when photos were all we had, all we knew about one other, before we met. At first, it seemed like an insane thing to do. Put us together. Me and you. Our photos had nothing at all in common, not even aesthetics as you pointed out. But that is something in itself, at least each of us has an aesthetic, and our photos say something about us. Still, I know what you mean. A film still featuring a seriously moody female lead (character?) on a dramatically lit set at some illogical if not fantastical location engaged (posing?) in an ordinary domestic activity (acting?) making what else, a Serbian coffee? And as if all these ingredients for an impossibly saturated narrative were not enough, the photo was taken by a photographer friend of mine in photo shoot style who I specifically asked. It’s all lights, camera, action! And then there’s my line about the poetic, about living and working in a caravan in London and coming over all authorial and authentic. And then there’s your photo. A flash paparazzi style night shot of a seductively and suggestively posing and pouting woman in front of a young man, in front of some shadowy figures, in front of a metal shutter, in some sort of underground nightclub in Belgrade. At first I assumed the woman standing in front you was real, that you perhaps paid the woman to pose with or for you, a socialite or celebrity of some sort? She was already like a sign standing in front of you, bolstering your profile or standing ‘up’ or standing ‘in’ for you? Larger than life really and more lively looking in a sort of orange Photoshopped way too? Hang on, something is not right here. I had read your line about standing , and I would have argued not so much next to but behind Serbia’s new social values, which at the time I took to be ironic. And the photo was amusing, the most amusing of all probably. But then the humour and irony turned into something more serious, sarcasm perhaps . I had about passed my initial outrage at you seemingly using a living breathing woman to illustrate your point when suddenly and sadly, to my great relief and greater disappointment, I realised that your photo was a full frontal fake, in your face fraud, a total fabrication. How didn’t I see it before? At that point the real woman along with the real Danilo were gone. What was I dealing with here? If not a chauvinist pig, a comedian, a faker? Was I wrong?
So what do I think, why are we different? I don’t know.
All I can say is that my photo was taken by Piper Mavis, an artist and photographer but also, more so, one of my closest friends. I couldn’t trust myself to anyone else. I was very uncomfortable about posing for this, as Piper would tell you, and it took several attempted shoots to get to the point of even photographing me anywhere near the caravan which I consider my private space and ordinarily invite only my friends into. Probably frustrated by days of failed attempts she distracted me by playing on my annoyingly ingrained Serbian ‘I want to be a good and generous host’ side by asking to have a Serbian coffee with me inside. Of course mortified that she even had to ask, I was making her a Serbian coffee at the time and hence my strange pose and that particular glare. Which is curious because I have never seen a photograph of myself with that stare. I look like my mother when she was my age. And in fact I sent in to imagine art after as an archive photo and not the one I selected which shows me sitting, more comfortably perhaps, in front of my caravan and my favourite place. My photo is lit that way it is because I wanted green light in my life at the time. I do that sometimes. I find green light calming and inspiring, it’s a highly personal thing. I sort of whatever the human version of hibernate is in green light. It probably comes from when I was very young, I believe, for the longest time I thought that blood was green. I reasoned everything living was green, so why not blood? I tell you, eventually, it was traumatic to discover that blood is burgundy. So the green light is probably the most makebelieve element in my photo in that sense.
So now I’m wondering what’s behind your photo? I’m wondering are we the same? Or? Are we different behind our photos, behind our social and cultural masks in relation to our posts before? And if so, why haven’t we, like Romeo and Juliet, or Tybalt and Mercutio in fact, fallen in love and/or killed ourselves by now?
And all this is after our very first real conversation offline today where a lot was said and evidently, there’s a lot more left to say. Typically, on the final day.
Appropriately, at two in the morning and with a poet’s fascination for dialectical emotions, I’ll leave you with a ‘till it be morrow’.
Ana
