To write or think out loud about photography is unusual. I live quietly and create in the same manner, which is why I am mostly not interested in what is being just offered. Sometimes I know, other times I have a premonition about a part of my attention being between curiosity about principles of the outside world and a personal lifestyle … my workspace is between these two areas. Or: I have always been a self–made person, which made palpable my belief in life and basically in all things invisible. To surpass own limitations and prejudices will always be my greatest and most important task. It always begins simply, and those fortunate enough manage to keep it. Creating is a way of forming oneself, and the life philosophy every person has gradually crystallizes through the creative process.

This is the state of consciousnesses when you are open the most and can easily identify with everything you only wish would exist. I understand this as compassion. When you come to the peak, to the highest point, you are exactly half way! Robert Rauschenberg says: “Whatever it is, it is the truth – but you have to believe in it. Whatever is in front of you is a fact, and you press the button, when you believe that this is the truth.”

Even though photography is created as a momentary fulfilment and references an inspiration of a moment, it still carries a context, which puts the photograph into a coherent whole. An artistic photograph has no ambition explaining and is always above this – it barely hints at an anticipation of a certain phenomenon, or thought the author keeps exposing, and can be seen as a whole in the material world. The focus is not centred on one single photograph, but instead on the whole feeling the author is creating with his/her work. The aim of photography is not to literally or superficially deal with the world, but a readiness to follow the phenomena the author perceives as understandable at the time, or intuitively accepts them.

Tanja Velak