Shortcuts #3
Takeover by the Office for Photography from Zagreb, Croatia
We'd like to welcome you to our new column, 'Shortcuts,' which will be published at the end of each month. We'll hand over our Instagram account to artists, galleries, and artist-led organizations. The week will begin with a 6-question interview on our Substack platform, followed by six days of daily Instagram postings by the artists/galleries, in which the artists will freely publish one of their works in addition to their own thoughts. We at Tarantula: Authors And Art, along with you, our readers, get to sit back and enjoy the daily surprise of discovering each new work of art. Please take a moment to click here to subscribe to our Instagram if you haven't already. Now, without further ado, please welcome the organization Office for Photography from Zagreb, Croatia.
Office for Photography is an organization dedicated to promoting photography and raising visual literacy through a wide range of programs. Their activities cover everything from exhibitions by Croatian and international artists, publishing photo books and a magazine, hosting feminist reading circles and a variety of workshops, artist talks and lectures. About their rich program, we talked to their enthusiastic members Tena Starčević and Sandra Križić Roban.
Tell us where and how the Office for Photography was founded and with what purpose.
The Office for Photography (Ured za fotografiju) is a non-profit and non-governmental association founded in 2013 in Zagreb, Croatia. The purpose of the organization is to raise the general knowledge of photography as well as to promote and contextualize photographic and new media production. We organize exhibitions of local and international artists in our Gallery Spot, which are often followed by artist talks, panel discussions, and workshops. Besides our vivid gallery program, the organization manages the web portal Contemporary Croatian Photography, which represents Croatian artists working in photography and publishes interviews and reviews. As the only digital archive of its kind in Croatia, the portal serves as a repository for works by conceptual and contemporary photographers, as well as the author's texts on photography theory, exhibition reviews, and photographer interviews to foster discussion on photographic art.
Our program is participative and democratic in nature, so we value audience feedback and actively involve them in designing program activities. Through exhibitions and discursive programs, we advocate for social justice and non-violence. We work on the principles of inclusiveness and sustainability, and the program content is available and free for all users in order to encourage positive social changes.
How do you choose the artists you represent?
We have a board that recommends artists for the web platform and helps to plan the annual exhibition program. Every year, we issue a public call for proposals for exhibitions and discursive programming such as workshops, lectures, etc. The Office for Photography’s initiatives are developed independently or in partnership with individuals and/or related organizations from Croatia and abroad.
What kind of conversations does your organization hope to spark?
We have always been interested in how the audience would react to the programs, whether they will only learn new information about a particular topic or will they engage in other activities. Or whether the content we provide will encourage them to conduct their own research. For example, in the program Fotka u podne (A Photo at Noon), one photo is interpreted in a simple spoken format, allowing us to examine other works by the same artist as well as broader societal and other aspects that inspired the artist’s creations. We want the viewer to become aware of that crucial moment when something prompts us to investigate, ask questions, and strive to learn more.
Art critic Tihana Bertek started the feminist circle, which resulted from many of our efforts. Through the lens of late/post/neo-feminist criticism, we are discussing about photographic practice, with a focus on the works of women photographers. In this way, we are developing a new language, especially on a theoretical and critical basis, which has been ignored for a long time in our society, especially in the field of photography. After a while, a more or less permanent group of participators was created, consisting of people with different levels or fields of education and of different generations. That contributed to various starting points and opportunities for discussion.
Tell us about your program/projects.
The Office for Photography operates in five program areas: the exhibition program of the Spot Gallery, the educational program, publishing activity, research and collaboration projects, and the web portal Contemporary Croatian Photography. The regular exhibition program at the Spot Gallery started in 2015 and is still growing. Along with the exhibitions, and to attract and educate as many people as possible, we organize various discursive programs and public formats such as conversation with the artist, panel discussions, reading groups, presentations of books and magazines, and workshops for students and other interested public.
Publishing activity has been developing since 2016 and is focused on the production of monographs, books on the theory of photography, photo books, and magazines. Our magazine Fototxt, is a periodical publication dedicated to researching, interpreting, and contextualizing photographic works of art, which are thematically linked to the organization’s exhibition program.
In partnership with other organizations focused on the medium of photography, we started a project called The Neighbourhood Lens that is focused on the district of Črnomerec, where the Office for Photography is located. In the project, there is a special emphasis on photography, which allows people without formal art education to express themselves while also participating in research, cultural and anthropological insights, making space conscious, and symbolically writing personal experiences into it. Since the project started, a series of exhibitions, thematic walks, lectures, workshops, and panel discussions have been held, and several publications were published covering the topics in focus of our collaborative research and program contents.
How does the town/country in which you were founded shape your organization? Is there room for international artists?
Although our program is primarily dedicated to the promotion of Croatian and regional artists, we try to present at least one international artist every year. This program direction was slowed down by the COVID-19 epidemic, but we expect that international aspirations and networking will pick up in the coming period.
Two international projects are particularly important to us – FORGOTTEN HERITAGE (2016-2018) – in which we were partners, as well as in the project NOT YET WRITTEN STORIES (2019-2022), thanks to the initiative of Polish photography theorist Marika Kuzmicz. All these experiences are connected in one broad-based platform of knowledge, in which young generations work together with already established experts in the field.
Tell us about your future plans/projects/collaborations/exhibitions…
This year, we launched the Hot and Cold initiative, which aims to establish a new mode of collaboration between the Swedish organization Centrum för fotografi and the Office for Photography. These two organizations are located on opposite sides of Europe, but their exhibition program, publishing, and attitude to contemporary photography share similarities regardless of the differences between the historical and social contexts in which the photography scene was developed. Outside the dominant institutional narratives, these two associations support young artists and encourage the development of innovative photographic practices, which in turn leads to significant changes in the way that the medium is understood.
In the year to come, we also plan to introduce new discursive formats initiated by the participants of the previous programs. We will launch a new exhibition program, Young SPOTs, oriented towards promoting young artists through short "pop-up" exhibitions.
The Office For Photography
For further information about Office for Photography, please go to their website, but first, spend the next week with the Croatian artists they represent by joining our Instagram page!