]]>An established author who decided to live in the Balkans. “The camera captures my visions of reality”
Interview by Gabriele Bassanetti for “La Gazzetta di Modena”
From Sassuolo to the Balkans and a non-conventional career. Giulio Zanni, who lives in the Balkans and works for the European Union, is an international awarded photographer and author of books.
What is your photographic path?
I developed passion for photography when I was a child. I started playing with the camera at 12. The attraction increased and I started to go through the books of the giants of Magnum, like Cartier-Bresson etc. My artistic maturity came relatively late and I believe as a consequence of various life experiences. As Ansel Adams said, photography is the sum of the books that one has read, the music that one has listen and the people that one has met.
When did you leave Sassuolo? For how long have you been living in the Balkans and why this choice
After the law degree I studied international relations in Milan. I briefly worked at the European Parliament in Brussels. However, I wanted to be on the field, in conflict zones. So my adventure in Bosnia started few months after the signing of the peace treaty, when the guns were still hot. I remained there for about twenty years, working for various international organizations like UN, OSCE and EU. I also lived in North Macedoni and now in Serbia. I went to the seaside in Yugoslavia with my parents when I was a child. It was representing the different closest to Italy. After Tito’s death, the powder keg exploded. The war was so close and at the same time far from Italy. I am fascinated by the history of a period of my life: the period of terrorism in Italy, socialism in the East, punk, the fall of the Berlin wall…
You are also working for the European Union. How do you combine your work with photography?
It would be too simple to say that one pays for the bills and the other feeds the soul, but it’s not like that. They are two important elements of my life and I draw satisfactions from both of them. Both my education and photography target realities in transitions marked by deep social conflicts.
You prefer black and white and stationary objects. Is it a specific choice of style?
I am not interested in conventional reality, which I believe it’s empty of inherent existence. I consider myself as an artist which uses the camera as a tool to translate his vision into images. I am a fine art photographer, post-production is an important element in my process. I photograph because I don't have to explain. I deliver images to the viewers who are free to react as they like. I prefer architecture and I find buildings to be a perfect basis for my artistic interpretations.
Can you explain the concept of your multi-awarded book “Spomenici and Brutalism”?
The word spomenici means monuments. Monuments built during socialism, to celebrate victories and battles against nazism/fascism, are still present all over the territory of former Yugoslavia and some of the neighboring countries, abandoned and left to the nature mostly by governments in denial of their past. From an architecture point of view, I find these structures extremely fascinating, they look like as they were coming from a different planet. My book is the result of six years of work and weekends spent driving anywhere in-between Ljubljana and Skopje. However, it is not a documentary exercise. I used the monuments as a starting point for personal interpretations and attribute them new artistic identities.
What are the results of which your are most proud of and future plans?
My photographic series received several international awards. The most prestigious are the gold awards in the professional category of the International Photography Awards and of the Prix de la Photographie of Paris. My photography has been an evolution for me. Everything changed, in every moment.
Sassuolo would be a good subject for architectural photography with its abandoned and post-industrial buildings. Did you consider doing a work in your hometown?
Indeed. It’s a project which I ran through in my mind several times.
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The word spomenici means monuments. In this book I am referring to spomenici as state built socialist monuments. While spomenici are the backbone of this book, the book contains also a section on brutalist architecture and an appendix on related urbex images. I started photographing spomenici around 2011. At the time, I had already been living in the Balkans for several years. When the post-war tensions started settled down a little bit, I started looking at spomenici with a different eye. This book is not a documentary exercise and is not an exhaustive list of monuments. I approached spomenici from a fine-art point of view and took them to the next level. Spomenici are an incredible basis of departure for abstractions and artistic interpretations, which contribute to the revival of these mostly forgotten structures. While some don't exist anymore, as they were destroyed during the latest Balkan wars as symbols of previous regimes, others are falling apart, taken over by nature, because of governments in denial of their past. My images are in no way a political statement.
The book is in English language and you can order worldwide in both digital and printed versions here:
https://camerapixo.com/publications/book-spomenici-and-brutalism
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You’ve mentioned that you’ve been taking photographs since you were a child, so you’ve had time to experiment as a photographer. Can you tell us how your current style evolved in your journey as a photographer? Was there a moment in time or it was a more gradual organic process?
I still get excited when I smell film and chemical. It was definitively a gradual process. I have been fascinated with photography since very young. I remember looking over and over at photographic books, which I now collect, mainly of the gigantic Magnum photographers and being so fascinated. I started experimenting but I did not know what I was and how to discover it. I believe in causes and effects and about walking on a path. I could not be what I am today if I did not go through various photographic phases and eventually there will be more to come. I think it’s self-defeating to try to stick with one subject or style. Everything moves, nothing remains the same, whether we like it or not.
You were born and raised in Italy but have lived in the Balkans for the past 25 years. In what ways do the two cultures contribute to your photographic vision?
I think that the artistic vision is a consequence of all our experiences. As Ansel Adams said, my photographs are the product of all the people I met, the books I read, the music I listened, the joys and sufferings I was exposed to etc. My book on spomenici is the prime example of a subject that I would not have been exposed to if I had not lived in the Balkans.
In your Venice series, the long exposures create an intense quality of foreboding stillness. There is such a deep quality of silence that I find myself holding my breath when I look at them. Yet, it is music that inspires you. What was the playlist for this series?
I have a deep interest in spirituality and the series on the iconic churches of Venice is part of it. I have traveled to Abu Dhabi and Istanbul to photograph iconic mosques and I have just completed a brand-new series, Caturmahapratiharya, on temples and stupas from the key places of the life of Buddha Shakyamuni in Nepal and India. When I photographed Venice, I imagined it completely empty, at the time of the plague, in 1400, when people either escaped or took refuge in churches. Yes, silence, but a disturbing silence. The soundtrack is definitively Stigmata Martyr from Bauhaus. In that time, it was believed that those massive epidemics were the manifestation of God’s anger.
Many of the structures that you photograph feel monumental. There is a gravitas in their sculptural forms and in the way they are tethered to the earth. How does black and white support the notions of scale, abstraction and audacity?
Also in photography, there are several clichés to which artists adhere without objective investigation. Abstraction is one of those. Abstraction from what? Reality?! Reality, as we perceive it, is an hallucination, it’s a manifestation of ignorance. Under investigation, we cannot find anything existing from its own side. We can speak of conventional reality, which depends on other causes. Black and white photography is a step towards stripping down the hallucination.
When you create a cityscape series, how do you decide which buildings to include and their position in the panorama?
Usually, those decisions are taken before shooting. Both in the New York and Brussels series, the images were developed in parallel to ensure maximum consistency of style. Otherwise, it would be like furnishing a house and trying to replicate the style in every room. I also believe that the concept of series is another photographic cliché. Why do we have to make all the images of a series look similar, with the same crops, tones etc? It is just conventional aesthetics, perception of reality changes from moment to moment. Why pretending it is different?
You’ve traveled extensively and shot in many countries. Where would you like to go next and why?
I will likely continue to investigate spirituality. There are a couple of south-east Asian countries that are definitively on my agenda.
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Caturmahapratiharya is a series of images from the four key places of the life of Buddha Shakyamuni: Lumbini – Nepal, where he born; Bodhgaya – India, where he achieved enlightenment; Sarnath - India, where he revealed the Dharma by giving the first teaching on the four noble truths; Kushingar - India, where he died.
These places are out of the usual touristic circles and are mainly visited by pilgrims form other Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand.
I traveled on the second half of August/beginning of September, during the monsoon season. Tourists are generally advised to choose different periods to visit India, but this was the only time I had available. However, from a photography point of view, it turned out not to be a bad choice. It was indeed very humid but I was not after blue skies and strong light. Overcast skies made it for me. Also, the off-season period meant less people around and cheaper prices. With a little bit of patience, I could wait for the bus groups to leave and I had the whole site for me before the next group came in.
Having been in India before, I wanted to travel light. The heavy climate made every movement an effort. Airport security checks on domestic flights were a pain. My bag got systematically emptied and every piece of equipment scanned individually. I wanted also to work inconspicuously. An electronic shutter has been a bless. A small camera with small lenses proved to be ideal for this project. However, my camera and lenses were not weather sealed and because of humidity some times I got condensation on the sensor and inside the lenses.
Tripod was a no-no. Local people are not used to see tripods and even walking in the streets with the tripod in my hand drew a lot of attention. The use of tripod was not allowed in many sites and I was immediately identified as doing professional movies for which I was either asked for money or for a special permit. Even if I had a very small tripod with me, I went handheld most of the times.
Long exposures were also a no-no. I did not want to spend much time on the same spot, messing with ND filters. While photographing, people usually gathered around me, asking all sort of questions, money etc. Being alone, made things more complicated. In such a heat, I would have need to use the in-camera long exposure noise reduction, which would have doubled the waiting time. If I really wanted a long exposure, I shot bursts of 60/80 images and then stuck them in PS.
While the circumstances forced me to use a classic photographic approach where I pre-visualized, set the exposure, lift the camera to the eye and shot, it has been going back to the roots and give up all the fancy stuff.
This was my third time in India. The country has developed in the last ten years and in the cities the prices have increased. However, the value of the services remains low and people seemed to have become more arrogant. What has not changed though, is that, as a foreigner, they don’t miss a chance to try to rip you off, which is somehow in contrast with the spirituality of the country.
After Caturmahapratiharya, I went to chill out in McLeod Ganj, north of Dharamshala, in the Himachal Pradesh. Here reside the Tibetan government in exile and the Dalai Lama. All in all, the country remains “Incredible India”.
]]>1) Black and white and long exposures. This are way that I often use to move away from the conventional reality. However, I felt I was hitting on a ceiling. The results were aesthetically very pleasant, the images won several awards, but I felt they were becoming a cliché. I needed to move away from my own reality and I thought: “There must be more to explore with a camera”. Good black and white photography usually has an edge in term of depth and presence, but selectively applied colors contribute very much to the emotions. I did not want to convey drama with these images but rather to give my own identity to these buildings, like in naïve painting. In general, I try to render the images in a way that they appear potentially real. With Blokovi, I wanted to unveil the abstraction.
2) A series of images must have a consistent style. Same crop, same tones etc. As a father, I appreciate that my children are different and unique. So, why standardizing my photographs? They speak to me with different voices despite being part of the same family and each of them deserves its own interpretation.
3) Photographic categories. I have beaten architecture to death. Walking around the blocks I realized that these buildings were background to micro-worlds. Life had its full cycle within the blocks. I could see schools, playgrounds, shops, bars, restaurants, offices, funeral agencies and all sort of dealings. With Blokovi, I felt compelled to create “social architecture”. Many of my architecture black and white images include a human presence, which is not the main subject but can be spotted if carefully looked for. In Blokovi, I also wanted to uncover the human element.
4) The file is my canvas and photoshop is my brushes. My fine-art photography has been about vision translated through tedious post-processing. Often, I felt I was like a monk tediously copying books and drawings to ensure their survival. I do admire the perfection of the post-processing I see in some photographs, but I also believe that the immediate impact of the image is what is left in the viewer. I did spend a more than a fair amount of time in post-processing these images but I have been more focused in unveiling the character of the subject.
5) You built up a series over time. For me this is becoming not the case. I don’t want to build up a series in the same way in which I furnish a house, trying to artificially replicate over time the style in each room. The past is gone, the future is not real, there is only present. I try to compress the past and the future into the present. My mood, which influences my photographs and post-processing, is where I want to ensure consistency. I took a huge amount of images in two days and 23 were utilized for the series. These images do not stand out individually, all together they make the final image.
Background. For years my main project has been about spomenici, monuments from former Yugoslavia. Spomenici are considered by some as part of “brutalism”. While working on spomenici I came across several amazing brutalist buildings. So, the next step was natural. Most of these images were taken in Belgrade. As I always associate images with music, for Blokovi it is Brian Eno’s Music for Installations. With Blokovi I got out of my comfort zone, which contributed to my personal development.
Link to the Blokovi gallery http://www.giuliozanni.com/p123318336
Brook Jensen. Giulio is a real thrill to be able to talk with you - even if we are talking via skype and you are in Macedonia. This is one of the great things about photography - is that it allows to connect with one another across all these distances, time zones, cultures etc. We are all together in this thing that we call photography. We have actually two projects that we are publishing: one is called “Spomenici” and a portfolio of architecture titled “Cityscapes”. But first, what is spomenici?
Giulio Zanni. In former Yugoslavia languages spomenici means monuments. They are spread all over the territory. I have been living in this region for 20 years, so for me it was a natural subject to pick up. Most of these monuments are abandoned now, for different reasons: political reasons, denial of the past, and lack of funds. It’s a pity because in the past they played a social role. My photographs are not a political statement, but as a fine art photographer I find spomenici an extraordinary basis of departure for abstraction. Mine is not a documentary exercise.
BJ. What was your motivating for photographing them?
GZ. I find them extremely fascinating and for been built in the 1960s and 70s they were very futuristic. Some say that they belong to the brutalist architecture [concrete] but I think that, architecturally, they have more a life of their own.
BJ. A lot of touristic snapshots of these monuments exist already but you have developed your own style…
GZ. The basics of my photography are long exposures and black and white, which represent a further step away from reality. I also love the mid grey tones, so I try to avoid pitch black shadows and bright highlights. Also, I like to include a human presence in my images, which is not the main subject and you have to look carefully to spot it.
BJ. In your introduction you had a fascinating quote from Ansel Adams who said: “you don’t make a photograph just with a camera, but you bring to the act of photography all pictures you have seen, the books you’ve read, the music you’ve heard the people you’ve loved…” I can see that this is very much a personal interpretation, These photographs don’t look like the world, they look like what you want them to look like, which is a function of your life.
GZ. I want to trigger emotions and feelings. You can see in my photographs what you want to see. When it comes to spomenici I am a sort of adopted child of this region. For me the quote of Ansel Adams fits perfectly.
BJ. I think it is also very interesting that you make a point out of the scale of these structures. Some of these are much larger than they might appear to us in the photographs, and some of them are much smaller, but your style brought hem together so they feel as a unified project even though they are different sizes from several different countries built in different decades.
GZ. Usually, series in fine art photography have the same style, like the same crop etc. However, each spomenik speaks to me in a different way, so that’s not always true for my series. Some of the images are square, some are panorama etc…Each of them has its own soul.
BJ. You used very long exposures to photograph these things that have no movements or whatsoever. What happens is that all the things around them move - the clouds, the trees - and that gives them a sense of stillness.
GZ. Long exposure for me is a further step toward abstraction. But also, technically, a long exposure gives me a softer light on the subject, especially when shooting in the middle of the day.
BJ. Let’s move on and talk about your architectural project, which is quite fascinating and for which you won several awards.
GZ. Yes, the Venice series has become quite famous and I am also very proud of the Brussels series. Actually, the Brussels series came out of an accident. I went to Brussels for business and I had a day to spare for which I planned to rent a car and go to photograph nuclear power plants in a couple of locations in Belgium. However, once I got to the airport I realized that I left my driving license in Skopje. So here I am in Brussels, with a day to spare - all set photographically with plenty of preparatory work done in advance - but without a car to get there. After some time spent in despair and a couple of Belgian beers, I was walking back to my hotel when I passed by one of these amazing buildings. I jumped on internet and made some research and, this is how the Brussels series was born. In each of the frame I included a presence, which is taken from the museum of socialist statutes in Sofia. Most of my visions are influenced by music. I needed to recreate the atmosphere and the emotion that I felt when I walked by these buildings on my way to the hotel in the evening.
BJ. So what is this composite panorama about?
GZ. I will work on a file for several days, and in the meantime, my mood will change. The result is that, if working on a series, the subsequent photograph is never going to be same of the previous one in term of feelings and emotions that I am trying to reproduce. Therefore, it’s going to be an artificial exercise, like furnishing a house and try to match the style of each room. Instead, what I did here, was to work on all the files at the same time in order to ensure maximum consistency. It has been quite an effort to work on seven images at the same time, but what you see as the final product is not just for presentation purposes. The images don’t stand individually; rather, together they are the final product.
BJ. When we saw the panorama of these buildings the visual energy just hit me: the result is very strong, very emotional, really terrific.
GZ. I am using this approach more and more.
BJ. This is a new way of seeing and presentation that is very exciting. I am sure that our readers will be inspired. Thank you, Giulio!
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My Spomenici is published on the March-April 2018 issue of LensWork. LensWork is a gorgeous US based fine-art photography magazine, printed since 1993 in hard copies on beautiful duo-tone paper, a rare product in the digital era. The hard-copy features 15 of my Spomenici photographs, while the extended digital version features 20 Spomenici images + 30 of my architecture photographs
http://www.lenswork.com/previewpages/lw135/lw135preview.html
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Spomenici means monuments. For the sake of this article I will be referring to Spomenici as state built socialist monuments from former Yugoslavia and other neighbouring Balkan countries. Most of these monuments celebrate victories and battles over nazism/fascism and some are ossuaries. While being the product of a regime, these monuments marked important historic events and dramas, as it is the case of Jasenovac concentration camp, known as the "Auschwitz of the Balkans", where hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in barbaric ways. During the socialist regime, these structures played also an important social role. These were the places where families used to gather during public holidays and where children would visit on school trips.
Architecture
The architecture of Spomenici is often associated with the movement called "brutalism", where the term comes from Le Corbusier's reference to raw concrete (beton brut). However, while most of the Spomenici are indeed built with concrete, their architecture has more a life of its own, where abstraction and futuristic elements dominate. Among the authors of the most fascinating Spomenici there are: the architect Bogdan Bogdanovic, the sculptors Dušan Džamonja and Miodrag Živković.
Bogdan Bogdanović (20 August 1922 − 18 June 2010) was a Serbian architect and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. He fought as a partisan during World War II and has been also Mayor of Belgrade. When Slobodan Milošević rose to power and nationalism gained ground and Bogdanović became a dissident. Among the Spomenici developed by Bogdanovic there are: Jasenovac (HR), Prilep (MK), Mostar (BiH), Stip (MK), Mitrovica (KS), Cacak (SR), Bihac (BiH)…
Dušan Džamonja (31 January 1928 – 14 January 2009) was a Macedonian sculptor who worked on some of the most famous Spomenici like: Podgarić (HR), Kozara (BiH) and the Memorial Ossuary to the Fallen Soldiers in Barletta (Italy).
Miodrag Živković (1928) is a Montenegrin sculptor who worked also on some of the most famous monuments like Tjentište (BiH), Priština (KS) and Kadinjaca (SR).
Why photographing Spomenici
I am not interested in engaging in a documentary exercise. I approach Spomenici from a fine-art point of view. In this respect, with the exception of Marc Koegel, I claim to be the first fine-art photographer who has applied a fine-art approach to Spomenici in a systematic and comprehensive way. Sure you will find many photographs of Spomenici on the web, but that’s not fine-art photography. Jan Kempenaers, a Belgium photographer, has been the first photographer to document some of the main monuments after the latest Balkan wars and to collect them in a book, disclosing these structures. However, he applied a documentary approach. As a fine-art photographer, my aim is to take the whole subject to the next step. These monuments are spread all over former Yugoslavia. While some don't exist anymore, as they were destroyed during the latest Balkan wars as symbols of previous regimes, others are falling apart, taken over by nature, because of governments in denial of their past or, in some cases, due to lack of interest in maintaining them. Nevertheless, some are indeed looked after as national monuments, like in the case of Jasenovac (HR), Krusevo (MK) and Kadinijaca (SR). Artistically, Spomenici are an incredible basis of departure for abstraction and personal interpretations, which contributes to the revival of these mostly forgotten structures by attributing them a new identity. Recently, there has been an increase of interest in these structures, mostly by alternative tourism. A Croatian film director, Irena Skoric, has presented a superb documentary on Spomenici called "Nezeljena Bastina". The Slovenian Primoz Smajdek has an impressive blog called "Simboli Polpretekle Zgodovine" (symbols of recent history) where he documents the whereabouts of Spomenici throughout the Balkans. He has also a detailed collection of what I call minor Spomenici, smaller statutes, throughout Slovenia. Spomenik Database is an impressive on-line database of monuments.
There is no space for politics in my photographs, they are politically agnostic. In times of photographic anarchy, where everybody take million of pictures with a mobile phone and send them viral on the web in a matter of seconds, photography has ceased to be a safeguard of reality.
Some of the most fascinating Spomenici
It would be very difficult to just pick one, but if I had to, it would be Podgaric (HR), by the sculptor Dušan Džamonja. It is one of the most wired, futuristic structures with a shape that suits the 70's UFO hysteria.
The Makedonium, in Krusevo, is the most beautiful Spomenik in Macedonia. Authors are Jordan and Iskra Grabuloska. It was officially opened in 1974, on the 30th anniversary of the Second Session of the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia and the 71st anniversary of the Ilinden uprising.
Petrova Gora (HR) is dedicated to the uprising of the people of Kordun and Banija. It is located on the highest peak of Petrova Gora mountain range. It is falling apart and is being looted of its metal panels.
Tijentiste (BiH) commemorates the 1943 Battle of Sutjeska and was developed by the sculptor Miodrag Živković. It is massive.
Banj Brdo (BiH) commemorates the fallen soldiers of Kraijna and was developed by the Croatian sculptor Antun Augustinic. It is located on top of a hill, not far from the centre of Banja Luka. It still plays a social role, with people walking to the top.
Jasenovac (CRO) is built on the location of a former concentration camp, known as the "Auschwitz of the Balkans", where hundreds of thousands of people died. It was conceptualized by Bogdan Bogdanovic.
Kadinjaca (SR) is a memorial complex to the Workers Battalion of Uzice Partisan Detachment who were killed in the battle of Kadinjača. It is a huge site, with several structures, which still attracts tourists and locals. Authors were the sculptor Miodrag Živković and the architect Aleksandar Đokić. The memorial complex was officially opened by the Yugoslav President Tito on 23 September 1979.
Buzludzha (BG) is the most important Balkan Spomenik outside of former Yugoslavia. It is massive. It was the house-monument of the former Bulgarian communist party commemorating the events of 1891 that led to the founding of the Bulgarian social democratic party, a forerunner of the communist party. It's located on the top of a mountain in the middle of Bulgaria and it has become a place of pilgrimage for urban explorers. The monument is now sealed, as in danger of collapsing.
Among those that do not exist anymore
Monument to Stjepan Filipović, Opuzen (HR), blown-up in 1991 and Makljen (BiH), blown-up in 2000.
Bijeli Potoci (HR) was looted during the latest Balkan wars
Living Spomenik
For more fine-art photographs of Spomenici please visit my website http://www.giuliozanni.com/p566783243
Warning: if you decide to visit some of the abandoned Spomenici in Bosnia-Herzegovina or in areas bordering with BiH, please remember that these areas are still heavily mined. Stay on hard surfaces and don't walk out of beaten paths.
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