Being (a) Negative: The Spectre of Socialism in Photographic Archives
Being (a) Negative – The Spectre of Socialism in Photographic Archives

Summary/Abstract: In rare anthropological interpretations of the glass smashing custom in the Balkan Peninsula, it is written that this could be understood as a manner in which one informs the environment of transiting to a different state of consciousness. This article analyses, on one hand, the questions encountered while working on the exhibition “Fragile – Glass Narratives, Broken Histories” (December 2022, Museum of Applied Art Belgrade), and on the other the possibility of interpreting socialist history from the fragments found in the former glass and crystal factory “Kristal–Zaječar.” The focus is on the discovery of several hundred rolls of discarded photographic negatives. The theory of photo negatives is fragmentary in the history of photography and this article is an attempt to change this. Negatives offer a unique possibility to write versions of history not complying with the official narratives: a new plane of understanding the new post-socialist “normality” is created.

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