Avoiding Concept

photographer Damil Kalogjera
written by Sandra Križić Roban

 

Some people predict that photography, “the old photography of my youth” (Marc Augé) will lose its meaning in generations to come. The present belongs to us forever; the camera acts as a freezer anyway, enabling us to communicate through photography, mediating between us and persons we do not really see and we do not really talk to.

 

According to Augé, the representation of an individual is not only interesting in the sense of a social product, but also as the representation of his social connections. In the case of the photographer Damil Kalogjera, this refers to the detachment he retains by respecting the complex, multidimensional circumstances. This refers to the topography of existence recorded in portraits in an anti-narrative style and produced in a continual process of making a kind of photo-essay to which the author returns now and again. With Damil Kalogjera, detachment produces a stage-managed opportunity, a kind of time-space-form filter, indicative of the photographer’s specific interests.