Ivana Tasev is a journalist by profession and vocation. For more than 12 years she works in the printed media, and in the last 6 years she is employed in the highest circulation weekly in Macedonia, “Tea Moderna”. She writes articles and interviews related to the art and cultural life in her country and the world. Sometimes she feels that the language is too constrained or limited to express certain delicate emotion. Therefore, where her words end, she continues her expression through photography.
For her it is a terrific hedonism, especially since it is not her primary profession. It means that she does not feel it as a daily duty, or, god forbid, as a burden; instead, she enjoys it, she gives it a chance to challenge her. It is more of a passion, need to express herself fully. Her photography is not so polished and glazed, even less aesthetically flawless commercially. It is, indeed, rough, somehow the very grain which she adore in photography, gives it a “vintage’ timeless artistic note. She is a self-taught photographer. It all started by chance. In 1999 she had a camera within her hand’s reach and she wanted to use it to freeze/capture the sunset, which she watched from a mountain, and a host of paragliders in the sky, hanging like lanterns.
She still consider that photograph one of her best, and this is how it all started. She makes her photographs on the principle of instinct and emotion, and probably relys mostly on her intuition. She has always been fascinated by details, not in photography only, but in life, generally. As the small, and yet so amazing things that Amelie Poulain liked to do when she was little. Such ordinary things, that almost no-one pays attention to, and yet they are here, in front of us. Such fragments, which pass unnoticed by most of the people, draw her attention. Such depth, minunciosity, level of details, fragmentariness are registered by her emotion.
For instance”, she says, “when in a studio recording, I catch David Sylvian inhaling between two verses, when I catch an extra in an expensive production in a mass scene being very much aware of the camera and unable to hide their excitement of being filmed; when in a smoky nightclub I notice a lover discretely touching the palm of his loved one …«
»I don’t know, even more minute details, the nose of a certain person, which gives lucidity to his expression; the way in which he holds the cigarette, twists hair between the fingers, nibbles on the lower lip, wrinkles the forehead, crosses the legs … the way in which someone’s body posture transforms depending on how pumped it is in (lack of) self-confidence
I really love black and white reflections, mirror images in the water, trees full of silence, thoughtful and emotional photographs, half empty, simple, unpretentious, shadows, silhouettes, contrasts, huge artistic grain in the photography, vintage looking, so that you could not gauge when the photograph was made; mistakes in the lighting, burnt contrasts, blurred, works that rebelliously overstep the boundaries of the traditional school of photography, I love works created by the heart, and not the proper exposure and composition. There is a lot of silence in my photographs, partially emptiness as well, lack of presence. My photographer’s emotion, as it matures, mostly unintentionally and unconsciously rather than in a planned fashion or calculated, tries to step on the path of some noble simplicity, revisiting the natural, the essential. What Chekhov often writes about between the lines. Or what David Sylvian sings about. I am a follower or maybe better, I am a humble worshiper of such emotion. I dislike pretentiousness and megalomania in the photography and also in life. I don’t want grand ambitiousness, which makes you and arrogant, vain and popular photographer. I dislike a photography staged to perfection, sensationalist, which makes you turn to it on the first glance and say “woooow ”, and then on the second glance start thinking why have you turned, when it looks like an overdressed girl with her eye on the marriage, whose quantity and strength of perfume makes sinuses strain; a coquette, with war paint visible from the moon. And actually, such are the times we live in, illustrate with glaring colors, with tons of computer make-up. This is why most want to create megalomaniac photographs. I have no such ambitions. But most of all, I am fascinated by the people in all their humanity, fragility, superiority, frustration, beauty, sensitivity. I want to photograph them dresses, half-nude, nude, depending on the inspiration of the moment. What I do not like is glazed (sugar-coated) photograph, modern, sterile, impotent, technically perfect, and still empty. Love in itself is my driving force in the creation. However pathetic and disappointing it may sound, for these shallow and promiscuous times full of lies. While I am writing this text, a fantastic video clip catches my attention. In Ohrid, by the lake, they ask two Roma, adolescents, how they imagine LOVE. One of them says : “Through the heart”. This is it: through the heart
Thus far she has had eight solo exhibitions. Five in Skopje, one in London, Great Britain, one in Berlin, Germany, and one in Novi Sad, Serbia. This year Ivana Tasev will exhibit in Maribor, Slovenia, mid-September.
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