11th – 23rd April 2025
Set up photos: Ivan Buvinić
We rely on our visual organs as our main perceptual tool, but the perception and interpretation of the visual world is not solely tied to the physical ability of sight and involves other sensory and cognitive processes. This is especially true for people with eyesight impairments, such as those with myopia, which is medically classified as a refractive error of the eye. Due to the inability to properly focus light entering the eye, distance vision becomes blurred, which may prompt a feeling of isolation and disorientation. At the same time, other senses gradually start to sharpen, contributing to a different perception of the surroundings and a stronger mental visual world (mind’s eye).
Inspired by a recent family experience, Ana Orlić creates a series of photographs as a way of coping with the possibility of substantial loss of vision. In the Myopia series, the author presents photographs of various formats, intuitively created in her immediate everyday environment, which she uses to convey the duality of the gaze and the central position of the eye, the barrier between the outer and inner worlds. The visible is expressed through a more direct approach to the subject-matter, such as a depiction of a lens in the palm of a hand or a blurry self-portrait, while the line of separation between the visible and the invisible is emphasised by frequent scenes of interiors and exteriors, views “from the inside” directed through the barrier of a glass lens. The impression of impaired vision is enhanced by motifs whose textures highlights tactility, thus creating a space imbued with a sense of visual touch.
The series reveals the author’s intention to convey a personal sensory experience that shifts from the field of vision to an internal psychological space, while re-examining the basic concepts related to looking: what is gaze, and what is seeing? What constitutes the boundaries between reality, the visible, and the imagined? What role do external and internal spaces play in this? According to French writer Bernard Noël, putting something in a picture means to project onto the world one’s intimacy, while an object rendered in the medium of photography may be seen as a false copy of reality or an ambiguous object belonging to two dimensions – reality, from which it was extracted, and the mental space, which transformed it into itself.
Sara Mikelić
Ana Orlić (Rijeka, 1992) completed her studies in architecture at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She lives and works as an architect and photographer in Rijeka, where she is currently attending a postgraduate specialist program in Urban Studies. Through the Association of Architects Rijeka, she develops and leads various projects focused on public space, education, and participation. She has participated in exhibitions in Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia. She completed the art photography school Drugi Kadar (2022/2023) in Zagreb, during which she created the photo series Myopia.
