The exhibition of photographs
LJUBIGRAD –BELANA LJUBIGRAD – BELANA
Jim Sumkay, photographs
Sava Promenade, Kalemegdan Park
November 29, 2011 – January 15, 2012

The exhibition was open on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 12 o’clock. The exhibition was displayed on the Sava Promenade in the Kalemegdan Park till January 15, 2012.

Organization and production of the exhibition: Centre for Cultural Decontamination Belgrade in cooperation with the Serbian Cultural Centre “Danilo Kiš“ from Ljubljana and PE“Belgrade Fortress“.

Support: City of Belgrade, Embassy of Slovenia in Belgrade, Embassy of Belgium in Belgrade, KOTO ltd. and NS Plakat.

“Ljubljana and Belgrade, in Jim Sumkay’s photographs, look like most of the (central) European cities. This universality can be recognized as artist’s gift to distinguish the common in situations or circumstances, for which we would dare to assume it is autochthonous or specific – “only ours” or “only theirs”, using the logics of contextualization. In that way, neutrality of his approach to the immediate surroundings, paradoxically, gets a certain political meaning. An anonymous photographer seems to be telling us that all interpretations and conceptions of identity or authenticity cease to be valid in the “public interspace”, in idleness of a daily routine. In these photographs, citizens of Ljubljana and Belgrade are moving from one place of production and consumption, leaving traces of their own slow-motion reality. The photographer’s anonymity, as a unique artistic intention, is best seen on the faces and postures of nameless anti-heroes in his photo sessions. It may seem that the sound behind these images is some kind of the silence of the big city, inverted or emptied sound perspective where we are welcomed by noise and traffic jam and bustling crowd in pedestrian zones. Silence that we clearly hear when we stop in front of the photograph of two Roma musicians on the streets of Ljubljana – next to their faces a put-out cigarette by a visitor of Tivoli park- proving that Sumkay’s photographs ‘communicate’ best with the audience in the public space. That’s why we are looking forward to having these photographs, which were exhibited in Ljubljana for three months, here at Kalemegdan and we wish them a ‘happy comeback’ to Belgrade’s everyday life.”

Vladimir Tupanjac

Jim Sumkay, the most famous among anonymous photographers, as he says about himself, was born in Liege in 1954. After discovering a fine arts section, he got interested in education. And that’s before he became a destitute and then a teacher. Photography is among his recent activities. He became an ‘addict’, the same thing which happened with painting and later with alcohol. This photographer with the face of a man busily takes photos of everyday life. Free, persistent, open towards people, invests all his energy in creating a neat endless chronicle about the way of living, what is happening (or not) of where he is at. Ordinariness and excellence. In the city or in the countryside. At the sun or in the middle of the night. At the village fair, the construction site, leaving the church, in the suburbs, in the garden of a lovely café. Everyone who is willing, children, and old people, enamored, dogs, cats,… Every image neatly dated and located. Socially engaged job, because he brings back the mirror image to the ‘photographed ones’, quickly, and if possible in context, by exhibiting the photographs at the railway station in Liege (an endless series of work), in hospitals, chapels, shop windows in the Danser street, or in Eupen, Poatie, Paris, Berlin, New Orleans. Also at the University of Liege web-site and in ‘no comment’ e-mails he sends to his friends. Oh, yes! Jim feels great in Liege, but he is also relaxed in Anver, Brussels, and Paris, Italy or in Côtes-d`Armor. Where ever there are people he can photograph.

From the text “About Images” by Georges Vercheval, published in Le Journal de Culture et Démocratie #19, 2008