The Excavated
The Excavated

Summary/Abstract: You don’t think about family photographs while they are revealed, exposed to sight and can be easily seen on the pages of a photo album; not until they get covered (burnt, shredded, destroyed by chemicals...), can they become visible, and the sight can recognize them, think about them. The late Croatian artist Željko Jerman was intentionally destroying the photographs from family albums through his “photo-interventions” by using chemicals, so that the characters from the albums could, destroyed in this manner, in the words of the author himself “outgrow the insignificant sensuality that existed only in the souls of our intimate, no longer existing persons” (the cycle Slike (iz)umrlih albuma/The Pictures of the (Out)dated Albums, 2003–2006). While looking at them, the ruined photographs from Tanja’s album come to my mind – they differ only in the intention that preceded the final outcome (Jermanov’s album) and the lack of such an intention (Tanja’s album).

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