Photography can do more!

Marko Lipuš and his approach to art photography

Someone once remarked to me that photographs steal the soul, but observing the photos by Marko Lipuš I am bound to dispute that statement. His subjects, including writers, have enigmatic and silent faces charged with an intrinsic poetic quality; their apparently still gazes appear to establish a dialogue with the observer. The artist-photographer “smashes” his images as if to underline a hidden personality within each subject. Hence the idea of Kratzungen, i.e. of critically analyzing the characteristics of immanent forms, to change the point of view (photo) and signs (text), to enable a merging of signs and images, where a form takes on the traits of other forms. The page of a book written by an author whose work has already been published is compared to the person (author) portrayed photographically.

The pages of texts express a representative view in the poetics of the author portrayed. The text creates a brief and “instantaneous” contact with the writer’s artistic output. The pages of the book, extracted from the context of the entire novel, offer a snap shot (a characteristic inherent to photography).

Going on to define how photographic images can characterise both the subject in the portrait and his or her literary works. Through a long, complex process (Kratzungen/Scratches), the meaning of a photo which goes far beyond a snapshot is reinforced. This ingenious process succeeds in providing an accurate description, sketch and interpretation, thus assuming a “literary” characteristic. Texts and passages by the subjects portrayed are displayed within the portrait and are transposed from a content, thematic, interpretative or literal point of view in an experimental manner (“Scratches”) in a photographic-visual portrait. The fil rouge is that the works are all rooted in painting, since imaginary figures and text are “photographically altered”. The images which the reader has already created are extended to the visual representation. The reader/observer is thus offered another key for interpretation.

Every print is taken from a negative, from where it is then placed on photo paper (silver gelatine). This “collage” is created on a negative and can therefore be reproduced, something that has never been possible with traditional collages. This photographic characteristic of reproducibility is an essential requisite, fulfilling an important photographic characteristic. Another important aspect for me is the possibility to interpret the text in the portrait through symbols. As a result of this, I can maintain the relative textual characteristics, that is to say the multiple possibilities of interpretation. In the portrait (original 150 x 110 cm) there are what we might term explorative images that allude to the texts/works of art of the subject portrayed and through these they interpret the latter.