Eastern Partnership Photography
adding sound tracks, videos, and text
to the visual narrative. Therefore, the
author should identify the form of
presentation well in advance in order to have time to prepare for the
implementation of the project. For a
multimedia project, it is important to
decide on the best time to make interviews, texts, and videos that will
later be incorporated into the final
product.
In the former Soviet Union, photographers often have to organize solo and joint exhibitions on their own,
because the institution of curators is
virtually nonexistent in the realm of
photography. The lack or insufficient
presence of curators can be attributed
to the underdeveloped contemporary
structure for the operation of art. An
author is often left to his or her own
devices and needs to possess expertise and skills in many areas in order
to be able to organize exhibitions and
promote his or her creative works. As
an artist and photographer, I often
refer to my colleagues as one-man
bands. They need to be able to play
several instruments professionally in
order to have a successful project.
Most importantly, a modern photographer must speak English in order to
successfully communicate with the
world. A famous work by the Croatian
artist Mladen Stilinović addresses the
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language of art. It presents a slogan
with the phrase An Artist Who Cannot
Speak English Is No Artist. This is especially relevant in the age of globalized art, now that basic information
on trends in contemporary art is taken from western sources, media, and
academic publications. Naturally, this
inference is not an axiom, because
there is lots of information in German
or French. However, one can be certain that being able to speak foreign
languages is relevant and necessary,
especially for the former Soviet Union,
which is still lacking in effective
structures for the operation of the
entire system of modern art, where a
photographer needs to be his or her
own PR manager and director. In the
western world, where the system and
infrastructure of contemporary art is
finely tuned and running, an artist is
better protected and integrated into
the system, and a well-developed system of grants and subsidies for the
support of artists is available to creative professionals—something that
we do not have domestically.
Therefore, in order to prepare and
organize an exhibition in an environment where a curator is unavailable,
the following steps must be taken.
First, an author needs to identify the
ideological foundation for an exhibition or a display, its objective and the
core audience, elaborate an explanatory plan and the layout of works – for
which it is imperative that the author
be able to have a clear picture of the
size of the exhibition area. It would
be helpful to receive a plan of the
premises with their precise dimensions or visit the exhibition space
to me \