Two artists, two different backgrounds, two different educations, ways of life. Srećko Rijetković was born in Zagreb, and lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Kai-Annett Becker was born in Hannover, and lives and works in Berlin, Germany. They met for the first time in 1998 in Pula, where they both led photography workshops for pupils and students. In conversation, they realised thy share similar views on photography so they decide to collaborate. Srećko had left Croatia a few years earlier and was faced with a vastly different new cultural identity; therefore, working with Kai-Annett was a welcome challenge. Thanks to a DAAD research grant, Kai-Annett travelled around Croatia and was drawn to the uniqueness of the country and its people. After Pula, their joint work continued in parallel with their daily lives at distant addresses. It started with a photograph that Kai-Annett took in Berlin and sent to Srećko, after which he noticed it resembled a photo he had taken, around the same time, in Stockholm. Srećko then “fine-tuned” the scene and took a new photo to make it resemble Kai-Annett’s even more. At first glance, the photographs favour everyday life devoid of anything spectacular, but each of the captured motifs is provoked by particular forces that constitute reality. The project that continued to develop from there combines humour with philosophical questions, the ones we associate with inspiration, artistic references, the issue of copies.
Further elaborating their “twinning” series, Kai-Annett and Srećko continued searching through their archives, looking for similarities in motifs, and tried to identify motifs in Berlin and Stockholm that would stimulate the creation of new works. The project effectively builds on Barthes’ analysis of the “docile interests” of certain shots. In contrast to what Barthes terms a unary photograph – one that produces only one effect – Kai-Annett and Srećko search for the centre of interest that leads them to take pictures, for that one piercing detail – the punctum, for the moment that ultimately bears witness to what was; something akin to a certificate of presence, with a touch of humour with which they approach the philosophy of everyday art. Whether this is a banana peel, spotted on the street in Stockholm and/or Berlin, or some other coincidence, we are able to ascertain in the selection of photographs presented at the Spot Gallery on this occasion, in which they address questions such as originality of motif, inspiration, artistic process, presentation of artistic work, abstraction, the position of photography in the age of its maximum use and unstoppable documentation of anyone’s daily life.
“If, according to Flusser, photography is the most abstract mode of image creation, does this mean that we abstract the world around us? – More so than ever.”
Sandra Križić Roban
Kai-Annett Becker (1968, Hannover), freelance photographer based in Berlin. She graduated in photo design at the FH Dortmund in 1993. From 1993 until 2011, she was an assistant to artist photographer Michael Schmidt in Berlin. In 1999, she enrolled in Master studies in photography with Prof. Timm Rautert at the HGB Leipzig. Since 2008, she was a photographer for the State Museum of Modern Art, Architecture and Photography – Berlinische Galerie, Berlin. Since 2021, she works at the photographic department of the Bauhaus Archive, Museum of Design in Berlin.
Srećko Rijetković (1964, Zagreb) holds the title of medical radiology engineer from the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb. He gained additional education in the field of Scandinavian languages, photography, graphics and art theory, among other things, at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm. He earned his Master’s degree in medical ultrasound at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, in 2008.
