Two decades, two views

 

“Two decades, two views" reveals a city whose urban areas are in precarious balance. Images determined by Andrej Ðerković and Gerard Pétremand are testimonies of what has been and will be no more. Ruins and urban wastelands, common places that some people don’t recognize them already, are as much historical moments that went missing, as urban benchmarks on the way of disappearing.

 

With these black / white images, taken during the siege, Andrej Ðerković gives us to see the effects of fragmentation on the built environment, memory and the human body. Urban fragmentation where the destruction sought the division of peoples... Memorial fragmentation where historical continuity is severed... Fragmentation of a body at the time of impact of the projectile dum-dum...

 

Concerning the photographs of Gerard Pétremand, they defragment our vision, reorganizing and dispersing our attention on details, interstices of urban design. Our eye is lost... By defragmenting also our vision, the photographer offers us a perception of changed reality, an instant where the eye is invited to capture the movement of the city and in the city.

 

Looking at these photographs, taken from the series Dum Dum and Topics, the effects of fragmentation and defragmentation are felt on our perception of the city of Sarajevo. The balance of our vision becomes precarious. Is this the same city that is given to us to see? The choice of colors it would mark a change, the effects of reconstruction? A few years’ intervals, these images show the uses of a wounded city, the urban areas both near and different, revealed by the sensitivity of these two artists.

 

If you had to pick one thing in common between these two visions, is that of having frozen movement invisible to the naked eye, but yet has forever changed the city of Sarajevo.

​

Nadia Capuzzo, Genève, December 2012