Gold, silver, and stone are reliable. Divine Nature is not. Despite my best efforts to fix my camera by buying a new battery, it finally died at the beginning of our winter break trip to the Balkans. Sure, I could've borrowed Tim's whenever I wanted to take a picture, but that just seemed too complicated. Besides, it would ruin the spontaneity of capturing a moment. At first, I was extremely angry that I wouldn't be able to record the images of this trip in particular, where I felt like I would see things different than anything I had ever seen before. But every time I longed to take a picture, I realized that it reminded me of something I had seen before anyway: artwork.
We started the true part of our trip in Serbia (after flying into Istanbul, Turkey, and taking the train through Bulgaria to Belgrade), which reminded me of "Village Wedding Feast" by Pieter Bruegel. The noisy friendliness from this painting is what I see in my own conjured picture, except mine is more focused on one jocund and rotund bartender near the market in Zemun who served us huge pints of dark beer. (Incidentally, I also picture him serving us a full pig, mouth stuffed with an apple, even though we didn't eat at his bar, because I remember eating so much pork, especially in the bohemian neighborhood of Skadarlija.) Behind him, through the bar window, is Kalemegdan Fortress, which now guards nothing but the river-raft nightclubs below, and a bombed-out downtown building, a strange juxtaposition of the country's dominance and submission.
The friendliness continued into Bosnia, but the reality was much starker and superimposed, like "Church Aisle" by Scott Mutter. We met a woman at one train station who spoke to us at length, ruing her countrymen's attitude, dependent on falling back on a false identity that doesn't exist and that has led to many deaths already. She had high hopes of escaping the country, yet our conversation was tinged with the sadness that comes from being trapped. She is the central feature in my own Mutter creation: In a long dark coat, she walks past a cemetery, her shadow cast on gravestones that grow into four different apexes -- an Orthodox dome, a Christian steeple, a Moslem mineret, and the Sarajevo Brewery smokestack, representing the singular, hopeful unity amid a convolution of asserted traditions.
In moving on to Croatia, we headed straight to the beaches of Dubrovnik, once again full of color and light, plus the breeziness found in "Interior with Phonograph" by Henri Matisse. The hues of the town lingered together like its influences. As we walk up the steep, stepped streets, I turn to look below. I see the country's native fish on a plate outside one door and the adopted Italian staple pizza outside another. The attempts at internationality are more palpable here, as my vision includes Tim taking a photograph of our new Japanese friend Hirosh, who shared mussels and calamari with us in Dubrovnik after catching up with us after we toured Mostar together the day before.
We started the true part of our trip in Serbia (after flying into Istanbul, Turkey, and taking the train through Bulgaria to Belgrade), which reminded me of "Village Wedding Feast" by Pieter Bruegel. The noisy friendliness from this painting is what I see in my own conjured picture, except mine is more focused on one jocund and rotund bartender near the market in Zemun who served us huge pints of dark beer. (Incidentally, I also picture him serving us a full pig, mouth stuffed with an apple, even though we didn't eat at his bar, because I remember eating so much pork, especially in the bohemian neighborhood of Skadarlija.) Behind him, through the bar window, is Kalemegdan Fortress, which now guards nothing but the river-raft nightclubs below, and a bombed-out downtown building, a strange juxtaposition of the country's dominance and submission.
The friendliness continued into Bosnia, but the reality was much starker and superimposed, like "Church Aisle" by Scott Mutter. We met a woman at one train station who spoke to us at length, ruing her countrymen's attitude, dependent on falling back on a false identity that doesn't exist and that has led to many deaths already. She had high hopes of escaping the country, yet our conversation was tinged with the sadness that comes from being trapped. She is the central feature in my own Mutter creation: In a long dark coat, she walks past a cemetery, her shadow cast on gravestones that grow into four different apexes -- an Orthodox dome, a Christian steeple, a Moslem mineret, and the Sarajevo Brewery smokestack, representing the singular, hopeful unity amid a convolution of asserted traditions.
In moving on to Croatia, we headed straight to the beaches of Dubrovnik, once again full of color and light, plus the breeziness found in "Interior with Phonograph" by Henri Matisse. The hues of the town lingered together like its influences. As we walk up the steep, stepped streets, I turn to look below. I see the country's native fish on a plate outside one door and the adopted Italian staple pizza outside another. The attempts at internationality are more palpable here, as my vision includes Tim taking a photograph of our new Japanese friend Hirosh, who shared mussels and calamari with us in Dubrovnik after catching up with us after we toured Mostar together the day before.
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