Baggage – Luka Klikovac

Baggage

Luka Klikovac

In the cult film Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni, the main character, a fashion photographer, took candid photos of a loving couple in a deserted park. The woman who desperately tried to come into possession of negatives and her interest in the film itself urged him to scrutinize the scene. By gradually blowing it up, the classic black and white documentary photography became an imperfect, spoiled, granular structure, while a common, slightly idyllic scene became a bizarre one, because there was a hidden picture behind it – a murder scene. What hides behind – that is a question that can be connected to each photography. Born in a dark, mysterious box, photography has gained the status of a “mirror reflection” because of our century-long aspiration to capture the real picture of nature. In its imposed and ostensible reality, it leaves space for us for various interpretations, destructions and deconstructions, for creation of one or more situations and stories below the primary picture that was presented to us. A series of photographs and X-rays called Baggage represents the last part of the trilogy of Luka Klikovac. In the first part Memento, the author, through photos of sterile, hospital atmosphere of young people on the autopsy table, deal with the analysis of life, death, time, our pointless fight with it, as well as the photography itself which constantly reminds us of transience and end. On the contrary, in the Mirror, with images of the same people, but in coffins and with certain costumes and props, he focused on unfulfilled desires, fantasies and imposed ideals, false self-presentation in the society of continuous production and
consumption of technological images, in short, on what we strive for during our life, more or less, and what becomes totally irrelevant with the termination of life itself. The story continues and at the same time ends with the project Baggage, which is placed between the mentioned cycles and represents a potential reality. The same actors were shot at night in different exteriors and interiors of surreal, tense and creepy atmosphere. With cold, aloof glance, as if the last people on earth, they are shown with suitcases and bags anticipating an action that is yet to happen. Who are they? What or who are they waiting for? Where are they going? These are not the only questions that are imposed. Perhaps more important one is: What are they carrying in their baggage? Due to the presence of tension and film structure, and more than in previous two cycles, Luka Klikovac has taken the position of a film director, the one who has left nothing to chance, from selection of locations and appearance of protagonists, through lightning and shooting, to presentation in the gallery. At the same time, he went further by introducing enlightened X-rays that reveal the mystery of the contents of baggage itself to spectators. According to common understanding about photography, the negative or the film hides something because it gives us shapes of objects, people or situations, while the positive or the image itself is the one that reveals. Here we find the opposite. A photo or a positive is the one that hides, while the X-ray is the one that reveals the mystery of contents of suitcases and bags, thus introducing new situations and contents into stories. In this way, the problem of reality and authenticity of photography gets a new, atypical approach. Acting on the principle of a trigger and by displacing the classical perception of a spectator, Trilogy and therefore Baggage by Luka Klikovac are the criticism of irony, absurdity, bizarreness of the modern society, our perceptions of the world, time and reality which is intertwined with the analysis and a review of the photography itself and our own perception.

Jelena Matic, MA

Share