– Kranjčar Gallery, Zagreb, 2022
The cycle of black and white photographs devoted to the city of Sarajevo is the latest in a series of city cycles that Anto Magzan initiated back in 2012 with Sydney.
For this photographer, however, a city is not merely a backdrop, a stage prop or an exterior in which he captures the subjects and shots he perceives as important or stylistically interesting, but rather a full-blooded, living, pulsating organism within which people, animals, monuments and architecture exist and reside; not unlike the modernist novels of the first half of the 20th century in which the city becomes the focus of the narrative and its main protagonist. Anto Magzan possesses vast and extensive experience in journalistic, so-called street and portrait photography, and has already been awarded internationally for his earlier city cycles. His signature photographic style, based on stark black and white contrasts and deep baroque shadows, from which vital details emerge, produces an exceedingly emotional effect on the observer.
– From the foreword by Iva Körbler, art historian and curator
