My photo treasures: Nenad Saljic

Photograph © Nenad Saljic. Twilight - Clouds.

Traveling is not only an occasion to experience foreign cities and unknown landscapes, but also to discover "new" artists. While preparing for a trip one may look at photographs from a potential destination and while on site we may come across a tiny gallery or local artists while strolling through alleyways leisurely. Both types of discoveries happened to me before and during our summer holiday in the Swiss mountains of the Wallis.

While preparing for our trip to Zermatt, I have come across the fantastic photographs of Nenad Saljic, whom I unfortunately did not know before. Interestingly, he managed to catch and keep my interest with only one subject: The Matterhon! Nenad Saljic is a photographer from Split, in Croatia, with an interesting résumé. By education, he is an economist, even holds a PhD degree in that discipline, was a professor, and has spent many years in the world of business. However, he has also been a mountaineer, caver, and photographer since his childhood and now follows these passions (again); mostly the latter one, I think.

Nenad Saljic must have been most profoundly impressed by the Matterhorn, for he kept returning to Zermatt twice a year for several years and created thousands of photographs. He drove there (by car from Split) in summer and winter, waited during the day and at night, observed clouds appearing and disappearing. The results of these efforts have been shown in exhibitions (at the end of october at Kunst Zürich), in galleries, online, and now also in a wonderful book entitled "MATTERHORN - Portrait of a mountain". I particularly like the composition above, because it shows the Matterhorn with a rather unusual shape. The north face is completely veiled and thus changes the appearance of the peak quite drastically.

The Matterhorn project of Nenad Saljic perfectly illustrates the value of series and themes; in particular for such an often-photographed subject as the Matterhorn. There exists a plethora of fantastic Matterhorn photographs created by photographers from all over the world. But the series of Nenad Saljic is the result of many years of closely observing, waiting, and photographing, which elevates his work, in my opinion, into a whole different league. One (lucky) single shot is much less meaningful and admirable (for me) than a series of dedicated, coherent photographs on a unified topic.

Nenad Saljic is of course not only a Matterhorn photographer, but has and is also pursuing other topics. If you are interested, head over to his website and look at the Petrified, Birth of a Ship, or Palagruza galleries. His work has been featured on many websites (e.g., Slate, Amateur Photographer, Mouth Magazine, My Modern Met, additional reviews), has won awards, is part of several collections, and can be admired in the real world, at the moment (until October 10th) in Zermatt, in galleries and in "Matterhorn - Portrait of a mountain" (summarized here). Myself, I hope to obtain a close look at Nenad Saljic's Matterhorn compositions at Kunst Zürich 15, an art fair where Nenad Saljic will have a solo show (October 29th - November 1st, ABB Hall 550
 Ricarda-Huch-Strasse, 8050 Zürich; nearby where I live).

2015/10/04 by Unknown
Categories: | Leave a comment

Leave a Reply