Graduated from Newport School of Art, Media & Design
Selected by Hannah Firth
One Crow For Sorrow (From the series 'Seeing Things'), 2006 - 2008
Artist statement
'Seeing Things' addresses issues on both a socio-cultural and photographic level. Firstly, it references the work I was occupied with from November 2006 – November 2007, on the largely overlooked social problem of poverty in modern Ireland. Secondly, it questions the nature of photographic seeing. Are photographers, as Badger says standing back and taking the wider view which separates them both physically and psychologically from their subjects ‘like the gods gazing down on the earth with Olympian dispassion’; or are they hiding with their presented vision, the hurt that they experience in the process? Does this predicament to get taken by the visual beauty of the scene in front of them – even a very upsetting one - override what is essential to one’s mental health – the optimism of memory? Are photographers tricked by beauty? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Selector text
Croatian born photographer, Dragana Jurisic’s stand-out contribution to the University of Wales, Newport final degree show for the MA in Documentary Photography is two-fold.
One framed work in an exhibition at Ffotogallery, Penarth, and a publication profiling her recent, more expansive body of photographic works.
At Ffotogallery, a single work nestles amongst the many and varied contributions to the group show - in the stairwell between ground and first-floor. The misty urban scene captured by Jurisic's poetic eye is like any grey Dublin day (she moved there from Croatia in 1999), except for the ominous presence of a large black crow that hovers in the centre of the image; threatening to attack; to penetrate your personal space.
Her second and more expansive contribution to the show is the publication 'Seeing Things'. In 2006 she was commissioned by Combat Poverty, an Irish State Agency to produce a body of work that could be used to raise awareness of the underlying poverty in Ireland in a period of rapid change. The resulting body of works – which sadly are not exhibited here – blend sharp detail with documentary detachment to create a poignant realism that calls into question the photographer’s role as cultural commentator and our own basic assumptions about the nature of truth and objectivity.
(Hannah Firth, 2009)
Qualifications and training
- 2008 MFA Documentary Photography, University of Wales, Newport, UK
- 1998 BA Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Rijeka, Croatia
Web links - gallery/work/projects
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