Zorica Purlija
Zorica Purlija is a multi-technique photographer who has exhibited extensively across Australia and is represented by Stanley Street Gallery in Darlinghurst, Australia. Recent solo exhibitions...
Zorica Purlija is a multi-technique photographer who has exhibited extensively across Australia and is represented by Stanley Street Gallery in Darlinghurst, Australia. Recent solo exhibitions include triple features at Stanley Street Gallery, Gallery Sydney, Gallery Paddington, and Gallery 61 Revisited in Newcastle. Zorica is a grant recipient from ARC and UNSW Kensington and her works remain in public collections in Australia, Italy, and the United States.
Ranging from analogue photography in the lab to digital cameras, Zorica uses multifarious applications such as cyanotype and using a variety of 120 film for different color effects. She uses an Argus 75 for her analogue photography, a vintage camera which dates back to the mid 20th century. Most of her analogue photography remains ‘organic’ as in without the use of enhancement effects with digital applications such as Photoshop. These grainy photographs contain textures and aged qualities similar to vintage photography from the 1960’s, when color photography fully emerged.
With subject matter steeped in everyday scenery, Zorica captures figures, infrastructure, and animals. Her documentive approach to photography reveals character and grit as she enhances and exemplifies visual imperfections. The beating heat of the sun, the crisp ocean fog, a smoky interior, these are the scenes captured by Zorica, areas which elicit a theatrical atmosphere. As if wading through a storm or fog, the dreamlike photography provokes a sense of fading memory and the passage of time. These vintage applications enhance our sensory experience and create a heightened state of awareness towards the familiar subjects in Zorica’s imagery. In her works, the ‘how’ becomes more crucial than the ‘what’.
Crow (pictured above) remains a piece unlike the familiar scenery known to Zorica’s photography in which a fowl perches upon a setup firepit. As if the crow symbolizes death, the scene alludes to ancient methods of cremation. The crow becomes surrounded by interference from the photograph as he emerges amongst the haze of the analogue photography. The landscape appears like the dunes of a nearby shore as the crow perches with great balance against a barren backdrop.
Zorica Purlija explores the realm of vintage photography as well as contemporary techniques, her multi-faced approach to the medium allows various interpretations of everyday subjects. With a great sense of atmospheric tension and a distorted hazy mist in the air, the photography refers particularly to our senses. Zorica plays upon the psychology of the viewer with objects and characters who carry great symbolism towards their surrounding environments. Through a determined lens, intricate lab processes, and using vintage cameras as well as techniques, Zorica Purlija creates retro imagery which harken the viewer towards the recent past with regard to eras of simpler, less complicated times.
