Filthy Feet Photos – first exhibition at Podmornica, Belgrade
Photography collective Periskop held their 16th event on the 24th of October at Podmornica (“Submarine”) rock and roll basement, Belgrade's most underground bar and venue that's hidden down the Čavketov pasaž. Periskop 016 saw the first exhibition by Filthy Feet Photos to a select audience of artists and enthusiasts. The artist behind Filthy Feet Photos stepped forward to project her set of 25 photographs with accompanying commentary. Here's the scene...
The crowd sips beer from the bottle, eyes fixed on the screen as Filthy Feet Photos' live debut presents them with a rich contrast in the bold colours and weathered tones of this female artist's object-centred surrealism. The room is lit by three sparsely-hung red lamps over the low stage that's home to the solitary drum kit. Tonight the stage forms a seating area, but most people lean on crates or stand against the black pitted walls that surround the projection screen. Coupled with the black-painted low bowed-in ceiling, it makes for an intimate exhibition space, and the sound of background rock music flows lightly through from the bar.
The Filthy Feet Photos exhibition combines broken scenes and worn objects captured in both Budapest and Belgrade, and its photographer expounds delicately and with conviction upon fleeting backstreet objects that are there today and gone tomorrow, as well as on the importance of looking up and down, and the beauty of decay. What is clear is that with her eye and lens this photographer cares about what others have abandoned. Viewers were invited into a world of rusty pipes, addled rabbits, retro armchairs, factories, the artist's ashes, and a cardboard carpet. As the images embed themselves into the onlookers, the photographer describes the two complimentary elements of the 25 images – images along a spectrum starting with luxurious textures in the bold palette of Budapest that signify vibrance and excitement, then moving into the blue, grey, brown tones of many of her Belgrade photographs that transmit the city's sense of history. Popular with the crowd at Periskop, it was a night where this English photographer made an impression with a robust collection of work that captured her own vision of urban beauty.
Also shown at Periskop 016 were exhibitions by other photographers, who showed sets from places such as Kosovo, Japan and Bosnia. Periskop's organisers network and arrange events via their Facebook page, which describes how “Periskop was created to find, support, encourage, nurture and encourage photographers and artists to show their work and express their creative talent.” Periskop's events happen on selected Wednesdays through the year, when they transform Podmornica into a photographers' refuge that celebrates crafted images from everywhere.
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