Portraits of DiversitySlavica Panić (RS)

photograph, 2004

In her work Portraits of Diversity, Slavica Panić actually concentrates at 'reanimation' of a photograph, by redefining its place and meaning within contemporary society saturated with media images. If usage of digital technology has introduced a doubt of photo's capacity to provide momentary and transparent identity between a picture and a referent, and if it has generally initiated photography into the order of virtual media, then photography is not any more just about identifying and memorising, but primarily about informing. In this sense, examples from the project Portraits of Diversity which – as the products of whole range of simulation procedures – could be defined as the third 'photography'/'portrait', gained by intertwining of two photographs/portraits, deconstruct photography as a "paradigmatic example of logocentrism" (David Phillips) and transform it into a fragmentaray structure based on logic of cut/paste command (as a recycled vanguard of the assemblage strategy), mobile windows, HTML tables, operations enabling access and manipulating of the information content. Photography is yet another amongst the numerous materials for media sampling, or more precisely, another sampling product, another information whose content and meaning establish links to other information.

Excrept from a text "Diversity of Photography" by Jasmina Čubrilo

Slavica Panić (RS)

slavica_panic@yahoo.com