Black & White

Barcelona Light&Shade

– ULUPUH Gallery, Zagreb, 2019

Barcelona Light&Shade is a testimony to years of experience in reportage photography, as well as Magzan’s predominantly aesthetic photographic works. The exhibition is a continuation of the black and white series titled Light&Shade which he kicked off with photographs of Sydney (ULUPUH Gallery, 2012). The paradigms of Magzan’s big city exploration is capturing light and its absence, as well as keeping track of beauty. The contrast in the display of common places, between the darkened parts and scenes exposed by light, presents the autobiographical experience of the city. Such a representation of Barcelona is devoid of the familiar color scenery and offers new interpretations of the totality of urban structure instead. Part of the photographs depict one of the most turbulent periods in recent Catalan history, the National Day of Catalonia a week before the Catalan independence referendum in September 2017. A part from this, the other part of the series is made up of images of recognizable, even often photographed buildings, sculptures and situations around them that the photographer snaps at the right moment. This moment is reflected as a well-known motif presented in a completely new way, from a new perspective or according to a different interpretation of its visual setting. The exhibition implies a unique piece of work, and Magzan presents some of the core aspects of photography – duplication of the real world, representation of a narrowed, fragmented reality that elevates the value of the displayed object, beautification, dramatization, confrontation with the “official“ and recognizable realities and the canonization of beauty of peripheral phenomena.

– Patricia Počanić, art historian and curator (translated by Una Krizmanić Ožegović)