Centuries ago, the philosopher Aristotle unwittingly outlined the workings of the modern camera when he described the near-magical effect from a solar eclipse: the openings between leaves on a tree – natural apertures – gathered the diffuse light from the sky above and focused it on the ground as animated, indirect images that revealed the Moon passing before the Sun.

Zdenko Krtić’s large-scale, photo-based prints similarly filter and project the environments around him: from the intimate spaces of family, home, and studio to the built environments of the city or the expansiveness of the natural world. Some works depict moments captured almost surreptitiously with the camera: views out a glass window, between the holes of a fence, or through a veil of linen. Others document changing faces or the growth of a garden, themes and variations tied to memory and history. Still others are shot as chance encounters that emerge suddenly from the flow of life. The camera becomes a means of studying the world.

But Krtić is first and foremost a painter, and in the tradition of artists who synthesize photography and painting strategies– from realists like Richard Estes to conceptualists like Gerhard Richter – his photographs are catalysts not only for grasping the visual environment but serve as foundations for gradually revealing its essence. He prints then rephotographs initial captures, sometimes merging the results with other images or processing them into surreal, painterly, even abstract transformations. Translucent wax painted over the results finally returns a mist of materiality to the camera’s flat image. A series of tondo paintings, round details “cored” from the large prints, further rematerialize the images through a buildup of visceral layers of wax, resin, and pigment on wood.

In a complicated reversal, Krtić’s revelations – about the ubiquity of looking and being looked at, about navigating distraction and surveillance, about seeking stability as we move through a sped-up and unsure world – are produced not by peeling back layers to expose something naked and raw. Instead, he illuminates our conditions through indirect or obscure perspectives, shifting transformations, and meaningful accumulations of processes and materials. Ultimately, the works invite us to participate in the artist’s ever-evolving efforts to understand the phenomena of life, not always by looking at them directly but seeing them through hazy and obscured specters of light and shadow.

Kathryn M. Floyd, Ph. D.

Kathryn Floyd is Associate Professor of Art History at Auburn University where she teaches and researches in the areas of modern and contemporary art and the history of photography.

The original title of this exhibition, Unsent Letters, was Found in Translation. It’s by no small coincidence that this exhibit should have been called in this way. Like letters, translation suggests a direction of travel. In the same way letter writing implies a sense of movement – sending a message from Destination A to Destination B – translation, too, is a process that involves moving a language or artistic work from one culture to another. Translation, however, is never a straightforward process of replacing Language A with Language B. Instead, translation is a dynamic activity which requires multiple forms of negotiation, mediation, and manipulation. Translation needs to reflect the norms and conventions that emerge in different cultural moments and so to achieve this, translation requires an element of change: this means intervening in the process in order to re-create and re-fashion the language to suit the target culture.

But, of course, this exhibition is devoted to unsent letters: the letters which never reached their destination. Similarly, translation throws up a series of questions not just about what travels into the target culture, but also what does not. Take, for instance, the narrative works of the Sicilian author, Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936). Despite winning a Nobel Prize for literature, there are very few translations of his narratives in the Anglophone world to date. Why? Arguably because his narratives don’t travel well. While children’s fiction, especially Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (1883), have received endless retellings, Pirandello’s narrative fiction has not. As is widely acknowledged, Pirandello’s narratives are very difficult to translate into English. His phrases tend to be long and wordy, and his philosophical style of writing, full or nuances, ambiguities, and idiosyncrasies, are not easily translatable, ultimately affecting his circulation and reception into today’s literary canon.  

Therefore, the primary task of any translator, like a letter writer, is to build a bridge from their own culture to another. I would say that a lot of this bridge is built owing to the invisible agents involved in the process. Letter writing does not just involve the writer and the recipient, but a variety of individuals or ‘agents’: the paper manufacturers, the ink suppliers, the postal services. And so is the case with translation – there is a network of agents responsible for mediating translation processes behind-the-scenes: the editors, publishers, critics, directors, etc. As I have argued elsewhere with Cristina Marinetti, in a rapidly changing socio-political landscape, where the politics faced by travelling peoples are as difficult now as ever, drawing attention to the forgotten-about individuals responsible for processes of cultural transmission, and raising the visibility of the hidden labor involved in such processes, this will work towards affirming the capacity for translation – like letter writing – to forge intercultural contact and exchange, and ultimately build closer relationships and clearer communications.

To conclude with the words of Susan Bassnett, studying translation is important because it reminds us of the meaning of ‘origin’ and ‘originality’, and because it makes us reflect about the multiple meanings of reality. There is no such thing as ‘sameness’ across language. Translation is highly individualistic and always involves one person’s reading of something else: there are so many versions of a text and many different translations which can come from a text. The study of translation is therefore vital in shedding light on the circulation of texts and ideas. This is hugely important in a world where travel and the movement of people is so significant today. When things move, they are transformed – they are brought forward. To finish with the words of David Johnston, translation involves the act of writing forward: that is, developing a relationship with the past which allows pastness to be protected and brought to a new life. I hope that, with this exhibition, we can be inspired to question notions like ‘origins’ and ‘originality’; travel and transformation; and think about the relationship between pastness, same-ness, and new-ness in relation to the act of writing forward, just like in letter writing.

The exhibition essay written by Enza De Francisci, Ph. D., University of Glasgow