Photo Books

Tribute to SAUL LEITER Early color

Welcome to the ethereal realm of color, light, and narrative whispers captured through the lens of contemporary visionaries. As a tribute to the pioneering spirit of Saul Leiter, whose profound exploration of early color photography revolutionized the medium, we proudly present an international group exhibition as part of the esteemed Belgrade Photo Book Week 2024.

Steeped in Leiter’s legacy, “Tribute to Saul Leiter Early Color” invites you on an immersive journey through the kaleidoscopic landscapes of human emotion, urban solitude, and fleeting moments frozen in time. Inspired by Leiter’s iconic book “Early Color,” this exhibition unites the talents of nine diverse photographers from around the globe, each offering a unique perspective on the interplay between color, composition, and the essence of existence.

Drawing upon Leiter’s masterful use of abstraction, ambiguity, and serendipitous beauty, these contemporary artists harness the power of the visual medium to weave intricate narratives that transcend the ordinary. From the vibrant streets of bustling metropolises to the quiet whispers of nature’s symphony, their photographs serve as windows into alternate realities, inviting viewers to lose themselves in the mesmerizing dance of hues and shadows.

Through a curated selection of images, ” Tribute to Saul Leiter Early Color ” celebrates the timeless allure of photography as a medium for introspection, connection, and collective storytelling. As we pay homage to Saul Leiter’s groundbreaking vision, we invite you to embark on a visual odyssey that transcends borders, cultures, and generations, illuminating the universal language of human experience.

Join us as we explore the echoes of the past, the hues of the present, and the infinite possibilities of the future, all captured within the delicate embrace of early color photography.

The 9 photographers that are part of the exhibition are:

Aaron Reyes https://www.instagram.com/tyndaro/
Alex Fokin https://www.instagram.com/fokinman/
Theo Belafonte https://www.instagram.com/theobelafonte
Cristopher Vrsalovic https://www.instagram.com/satyrcam/
Katarina Trifunovic https://www.instagram.com/katarinatrifunovic/
Kirill Osipov https://www.instagram.com/okiris.photo
Rebecca Uliczka https://www.instagram.com/rebekunstphoto/
Sam L. Street https://www.instagram.com/sam.and.street/
Zeynep Ayta https://www.instagram.com/aytazeynep

“Occasional equilibrium” is an autobiographical project which allows us to follow the photographer through her journey around the globe, from Moscow to others cities around the world. Rented apartments, hotel rooms, new encounters and partings consistently mold the path of the author. The subjects in the photographs also denote being in a permanent transit zone, eternal limbo. Immigrants. The author finds herself, like those around her, isolated and lost.

When a person moves from their country and step into the land of another to look for a home, they are in a liminal, anxious state. Unable to control their surroundings, what happens to them, how they react or interpret them. This is an infinitely stretched process of transformation, a transition from one status to another. Liminality doesn’t often lead to change, it only fills transitional moments. It creates a space which is later filled with that person’s fears and uncertainty.

Often times when we believe we are closer to a more calm and habitual point in time, it seems never to fully arrive. Although a bit of balance may be found, there are still new moves ahead, changing apartments, which means the path continues.

Curator: Olga Matveeva

Marta Ladokhina is a photographic artist raised in Russia, and currently living in Belgrade. She studied contemporary documentary and fine art photography. 
The most important part of her professional activities is devoted to personal, long-term projects. In her projects, Marta addresses topics such as emigration, instability, and transitional states.
Finalist in the international competitions Fresh Eyes New Talent by GUP Magazine and Aesthetica Art Prize. 
The latest project “Occasional Equilibrium” was shown at international photographic festivals.

https://ladokhina.com/
https://www.olmatveeva.com/

Still Birth 

Maternità massima. Il lavoro di Chiara Ernandes agisce su due piani generativi, entrambi assoluti. Still Birth, libro e progetto, si fa in quest’allestimento pulsazione soggettiva, esistenziale sul parto dell’immagine e su quello eruttivo, germinale della Natura. Due genesi che sovrapponendosi aprono una parentesi di tempo sospeso. L’uomo, il medico, il padre, la famiglia stanno a guardare: tra gli archetipi e la chora. Chiara era, non è, e sarà altro. Lungo questa linea si sviluppa il dialogo con la materia che ribolle dal ventre naturale del boschivo, dello ctonio, della notte. Epifanie di luce sublimano momentaneamente il suolo e le voragini che vi si aprono. Verticalità esplosiva, orizzontalità che sprofonda lo sguardo. Il tempo dei fatti, della cronaca sta nell’arcipelago degli eventi a testimoniare una linea temporale, tutta umana. Ma in questo rimbalzo di ritmi figurativi e ricorrenze di forme, urge il discorso sull’immagine e il suo istantaneo metabolismo. Il liquefarsi dei confini è l’impossibilità di trattenere riconoscibilità e chiarezza. Nel fantasma dell’immagine si perde il ruolo storico della fotografia. Foto di archivio, documento, racconto, si fanno diafane apparizioni nell’utero fecondo. 

Simone Azzoni https://www.simoneazzoni.net/

La nascita di un figlio è un rincorrersi di ore spiazzanti. È un evento catartico. Una transizione. Ma, a volte, l’attesa catarsi si strozza in un suono spezzato. E camici senza volto recitano un vuoto vocabolario medico, fatto di speranze e rassegnazioni. Ogni storia famigliare custodisce il proprio. Chiara Ernandes, in una notte d’estate del 1989, nacque morta. Lo rimase per cinque lunghi minuti. Le narrazioni più retoriche e sensazionaliste ricamerebbero sul dolore di una madre. Sull’impotenza febbrile di un padre. Sulla frenesia dei medici, sacerdoti di un culto razionalista, in cerca di un piccolo miracolo laico. E sul sollievo di quel primo respiro. Ma tralascerebbero un soggetto fondamentale, la neonata. Quasi che l’acerba sfera emotiva di quella bambina, la rendesse impermeabile alle variazioni di un mondo ancora sconosciuto. E che per cinque interminabili minuti l’ha fatta attendere sulla soglia. Still Birth non è solo un libro, è il risultato di un imprinting visuale, di un limbo che si è impresso nel subconscio di una bambina che ha deciso di attendere nell’altrove, prima di rivendicare il proprio diritto a esistere. Queste pagine vanno a ricostruire l’unicum di una donna ormai trentenne che non ricorda quella bambina, ma che sente un’energia terrosa scorrerle dentro. Quella che gli spagnoli chiamano Duende, e che Garcìa Lorca descriveva così: “Il Duende appartiene a pochi. È l’energia della terra. Si sa solo che brucia il sangue come un tropico di vetri, che estenua, che respinge tutta la dolce geometria appresa, che rompe gli stili, che si appoggia al dolore umano inconsolabile.” In questa inquietudine Still Birth ha preso vita. Dalle prime fondamenta narrative abitate da paesaggi immoti, da panorami rocciosi – dal Duende, appunto, che in quei cinque minuti le si è annidato dentro -, Chiara Ernandes ha proseguito il suo incessante vagare. In quegli scenari sospesi, si è andata a sedimentare un’altra narrazione, quella dell’Io. Still Birth è diventato la ricostruzione del proprio passato, partendo da un epicentro, la non-nascita, per arrivare a comprendere sé stessa e il proprio immaginario. Oggetti familiari, immagini di archivio, un simbolismo allusivo e poetico, i reperti clinici della propria nascita, tutti questi linguaggi contribuiscono a dilatare quei cinque minuti, rendendoli un punctum narrativo fondamentale, attorno a cui ruota l’esistenza stessa dell’autrice. Un’esistenza scandita anche dalla ricerca incessante della propria immagine. Chiara Ernandes si sofferma sul suo viso come a volersene riappropriare fin nei minimi dettagli, quasi non le appartenesse. Lo fotografa ossessivamente, comparandolo con quello del padre e della madre, dissolvendolo nella luce. Fino ad arrivare a renderlo una maschera, scolpita nel gesso, trasformandolo così in un simulacro, una scultura imperturbabile allo scorrere del tempo. Il creare un calco con le proprie fattezze evoca tradizioni ancestrali, crepuscolari. Ma non è una maschera funeraria quella di Chiara Ernandes. È il lascito della farfalla, quando abbandona il proprio bozzolo, ormai trasmutata. Questo forse è il valore profondo di Still Birth. Prima ancora di una poetica indagine sul proprio passato, della celebrazione del proprio essere al mondo, Still birth è la fine di un viaggio. È un rito di passaggio in cui l’autrice raccoglie e condensa il suo essere, amplificandolo e riassimilandolo. E apprestandosi, così, a proseguire il proprio cammino. 

Francesco Rombaldi https://www.instagram.com/francesco_rombaldi/

Chiara Ernandes (Roma, 1989) Chiara Ernandes è un’artista visiva che vive tra Roma e Viterbo. 
Dopo il liceo frequenta la Scuola Romana di Fotografia interessandosi, poi, alla fotografia di scena. Inizia a lavorare come fotografa di scena nell’ambito del teatro contemporaneo e delle arti performative. 
Nel 2018 incontra Francesco Rombaldi fondatore di Yogurt Magazine e di uno spazio focalizzato sulle arti visive e la fotografia contemporanea. Tra il 2018 e il 2021 lavora e realizza “Still Birth”, una ricerca autobiografica nella quale affronta e approfondisce diversi temi personali relativi alla sua nascita, ricerca che pone le basi e struttura la sua ricerca artistica. Il lavoro è diventato un libro nel 2021 pubblicato da Yogurt Editions, presentato in occasione di Charta, festival biennale di fotografia contemporanea a Roma.
Nel 2022 vince Giovane Fotografia Italiana, esponendo ‘Still Birth’ nell’ambito di Fotografia Europea a Reggio Emilia. 
Viene invitata ad esporre all’Athens Photofestival 2022 e arriva finalista al Festival Circulation(s)’22 e in shortlist nell’ambito di diversi festival internazionali. Nel 2023 viene invitata all’Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Stoccolma nell’ambito di Eyes On Tomorrow, organizzato e curato da Giovane Fotografia Italiana. Negli ultimi anni l’autrice ha arricchito il suo percorso di ricerca grazie anche alla partecipazione a diverse residenze artistiche, che le hanno dato modo di lavorare con nuovi media e utilizzare un linguaggio visivo multidisciplinare. 
https://www.instagram.com/chiara.ernandes/

Grenze Arsenali Fotografici è un Festival di fotografia Internazionale diretto da Francesca Marra e Simone Azzoni. A Verona è un osservatorio sui linguaggi e sui generi della fotografia contemporanea. Giunto alla sua settima edizione comprende nel calendario annuale incontri, laboratori e talk che interessano l’intero quartiere di Veronetta. L’edizione del 2024 è dedicata alla “Rinuncia”. 
https://www.grenzearsenalifotografici.com/

Il progetto Yogurt nato nel 2015 come rivista online dedicata alle arti visive, è caratterizzato da un’incessante ricerca sui fermenti, i campi di indagine, le tendenze estetiche e narrative e i territori di confine della fotografia contemporanea. Yogurt si sviluppa attraverso una rivista web, una libreria, la Paper Room, specializzata in Photobooks, una casa editrice e un’agenzia creativa. Yogurt organizza anche Charta, un festival dedicato ai Photobooks.
https://yogurtmagazine.com/

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Still Birth 

Ultimate motherhood. Chiara Ernandes’ work operates on two generative layers, both absolute. Still Birth, book and project, in this installation becomes a subjective, existential pulsation on the birth of the image and on the eruptive and germinal one of Nature. Two overlapping genesis that open a parenthesis of suspended time. The man, the doctor, the father, the family all stand watching: between the archetypes and the chora. Chiara was, is not, and will be something else. Along this line, a dialogue develops along with the matter that seethes from the natural womb of the woodland, the chthonic, the night. Epiphanies of light momentarily sublimate the ground and the abysses that open there. Explosive verticality, horizontality that plunges the gaze. The time of facts, of the chronicle stands in the archipelago of events to testify to a timeline that is all human. But in this bounce of figurative rhythms and recurrences of forms, the discourse on the image and its instantaneous metabolism is urgent. The liquefaction of boundaries is the impossibility of retaining recognisability and clarity. In the ghost of the image, the historical role of photography is lost. Archive photos, document, story, become diaphanous apparitions in the fertile womb. 

Simone Azzoni https://www.simoneazzoni.net/

The birth of a child is like chasing disconcerting hours. It’s a cathartic event, a transitional moment. But sometimes the cathartic expectation chokes with a cracking sound. Faceless medical white coats act out empty medical words, made of hope and resignation. Each and every family history preserves their own. In a summer night of 1989, Chiara Ernandes was stillborn after childbirth. She was like that for five long minutes. The most rhetoric, shocking narration would spend some words embellishing the grief of a mother, It would linger on the frantic father’s powerlessness, on the doctors’ frenzy and their search of a small rationalistic miracle as priests of a rationalistic cult. And on the relief of that first breath. But it would neglect the fundamental protagonist, the newly born baby, as if her unripe emotional state could make her immune from the changes in a still unknown world, which let her keep waiting on the threshold for five interminable minutes. Still Birth is not only a book, it’s the result of a visual imprinting, of a limbo that left a scar on a child’s subconscious mind. She decided to wait on the other side before staking her claim to exist. These pages try to rebuild the whole of an almost thirty-year old woman, who doesn’t remember that child but feels an earthy energy flowing through her. The one that the Spanish call Duende and Garcia Lorca described like that: “The Duende belongs to a few people. It’s the energy of the Earth. It is known to burn your blood like a tropic made of glass, which is consuming or rejecting the sweet geometry we were taught. It disrupts the styles we know; it leans on human overwhelming sorrow.” In this restlessness Still Birth took shape. From the first narrational foundations, inhabited by motionless landscapes, by rocky panoramas- by the Duende, indeed, that in those five minutes nested inside her- Chiara Ernandes has continued her ceaseless wandering. In those suspended landscapes, another narration found roots, the one of her Inner Self. Still Birth has become the reconstruction of her past, starting from an epicentre, her Non-Birth, to get to understand herself and her imagery. Family objects, archive images, suggestive and poetic symbolism, her birth’s medical records, all these instruments contribute to expanding those five minutes, turning them into a fundamental narrative starting point, around which all the author’s existence is revolving. Her existence is also defined by the ceaseless search of her own image. Chiara Ernandes lingers on her face and its very details, as if she were trying to claim it as her own, as if she felt it didn’t really belong to her. She also takes obsessive pictures of it, comparing it with her parents’, melting it into light. Until her countenance becomes a mask, carved in chalk, turning it into an effigy, a sculpture immune to the passage of time. To create a mask with one’s own features can evoke ancestral, hazy traditions. But Chiara Ernandes’s mask is not a funerary one, it’s an utterly changed butterfly’s legacy while leaving its cocoon. Perhaps this is the deep value of Still Birth. Before being a poetical search of Chiara’s past, of the celebration to walk on the earth, it’s the end of a journey. It’s a rite of passage where the author collects and condense her being while expanding and absorbing it. In this way she’s getting ready to walk on. 

Francesco Rombaldi https://www.instagram.com/francesco_rombaldi/

Chiara Ernandes (Rome, 1989)
Chiara Ernandes is a visual artist who lives between Rome and Viterbo. After high school, she attended the Scuola Romana di Fotografia and Officine Fotografiche, becoming interested in stage photography. 
She began working as a stage photographer in the field of contemporary theatre and performing arts. In 2018 she meets Francesco Rombaldi in Rome, founder of Yogurt Magazine and a space focused on visual arts and contemporary photography. Between 2018 and 2021 she worked on and realised “Still Birth”, an autobiographical research in which she tackled and explored various personal themes relating to her birth, a research that laid the foundations and structured her artistic research. The work became a book in 2021 published by Yogurt Editions, presented at Charta, a biennial festival of contemporary photography in Rome. In 2022 she won Young Italian Photography, exhibiting ‘Still Birth’ as part of Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia. She was invited to exhibit at the Athens Photofestival 2022 and was a finalist at the Circulation(s)’22 Festival and shortlisted at several international festivals. 
In 2023 she was invited to the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm as part of Eyes On Tomorrow, organised and curated by Giovane Fotografia Italiana. In recent years, the author has enriched her research through participation in various artistic residencies, which have given her the opportunity to work with new media and use a multidisciplinary visual language. 
https://www.instagram.com/chiara.ernandes/

Grenze Arsenali Fotografici is an International Photography Festival directed by Francesca Marra and Simone Azzoni. In Verona it is an observatory on the languages and genres of contemporary photography. Now in its seventh edition, the annual calendar includes meetings, workshops and talks that affect the entire district of Veronetta. The 2024 edition is dedicated to the “Renunciation”. 
https://www.grenzearsenalifotografici.com/

The Yogurt project established in 2015 as an online magazine dedicated to the visual arts, is characterized by relentless research into what are the ferments, fields of inquiry, aesthetic and narrative trends and border territories of contemporary photography. Yogurt is developed through a web magazine, a bookshop, the Paper Room, specializing in photobooks, a publishing house and a creative agency. Yogurt also organizes Charta, a festival dedicated to photobooks.
https://yogurtmagazine.com/

La exposición terminará el 20.6.2024

Pastinsky

With this exhibition, we become acquainted with the story of Margarita and that of her father Joaquín, and we also discover Pastinsky, Joaquín’s artistic alter ego. We uncover Margarita’s narrative, a descendant of a bourgeois family that lived for several generations in a huge apartment, and who is forced to leave it due to the increase in rent.

Immersing oneself in the home of Margarita’s family, a common yet special apartment in the heart of Barcelona’s Eixample, is a unique experience. Josep Maria de Llobet guides us through every room and corner, tracing the passage of time from the day Joaquín turned 78 and Pastinsky was born. During this journey, we experience the final days, the last hours, the moment of moving out, that earthly limbo to which banks and the economy have led us, but for which they do not offer an easy way out.

Through this great work, Josep Maria speaks to us about the housing crisis, a problem that many cities have been suffering from for a long time and which is hitting Barcelona very hard; the “gentrification 2.0”, the invisible evictions. The novelty is that now it is not only the most disadvantaged classes that are forced to move, nor does it only affect the most depressed neighborhoods.

For Belgrade Photo Book Week, it is a genuine honor and pleasure to be able to include a work of the quality and relevance of “Pastinsky” in our program. Josep Maria de Llobet has accepted the challenge of bringing his work from paper to exhibition format for the first time, here in our city, at the Instituto Cervantes de Belgrado.

Josep Maria de Llobet was born in 1973 in Barcelona, where he resides. Graduated from the Faculty of Law at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, he combined his university studies with photography studies at the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya (IEFC), of which he has been the director since 2023. He also collaborates with the university by teaching photography workshops at various architecture schools, such as Barcelona or the IASAP-BV program at the University of Illinois. His work is part of public and private collections, including the Art Collection of Banc Sabadell, the National Photography Collection of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and the Library of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His work aims to generate documents using tools of artistic language, which serve him to reflect on social reality from a contemporary perspective. His field of action is the urban territory, and he uses photographic imagery as material for visual reconstruction of his environment. He has carried out photographic installations in emblematic spaces such as the Modelo Prison in Barcelona, and exhibited in festivals such as DOCfield or Revela-T and in different galleries. He has been published in national and international media and has participated as a jury member in various photographic competitions. He has also been invited as a speaker at conferences and festivals. His beginnings as a professional photographer are linked to advertising, although his interest in architectural space and urban territory has led him to collaborate more and more regularly with architecture and urbanism studios, museums, and public and private institutions. He is a member of the association Photographic Social Vision and co-founder and editor at the independent publishing house specializing in photobooks, Ediciones Posibles.

https://www.dellobet.com/
https://www.instagram.com/jm_dellobet/

These photos were taken in Barcelona during the year 2014.

The works in this exhibition are collected in the book Pastinsky, published by Ediciones Posibles.

https://www.edicionesposibles.com/

This project is supported by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)