Rino Efendić – Polaroid Land

15. 3. – 16. 4. 2021.

Photo: Marko Ercegović

Photographer Rino Efendić’s artistic activity, initiated in the late 1970s, is characterized by a straightforward photographic process, unburdened by excessive stylization, spectacular motifs or attempts to fine-tune or retouch his works by means of different lab techniques. During a trip to Germany, while he was still a high school student, he discovered the magic of the then-popular Polaroids, opting for this “fast technique” that represented a sharp turn in the perception about the creation of the photographic image, edging closer to the perceptions of today. Efendić remains consistent in his use of Polaroids all the way to the early 2000s, recording, as he calls them, “tiny landscapes” – suggestive vignettes imbued with a palette of soft colours, free from sensationalist reality. Efendić’s photographs, devoid of human presence, dominated by the emptiness of forgotten spaces and silence-filled moments, do not, however, impose a pathetic sense of nostalgia.

Flâneurism thus results in the author’s meditative photo séance, through which he document places familiar to him and motifs captured in different moments in time. In addition to landscapes, the exhibition at Spot Gallery also presents works that clearly demonstrate the specific quality of the colour of Polaroid images, their materiality, but also a desire for exploration of the medium when it comes to self-representation, momentary inspiration or sequential documenting of the state of a moment.

Rino Efendić (1961) was born in Sinj. He studied Cinematography at the Academy of Dramatic Art
in Zagreb as well as Art History and Ethnology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in
Zagreb. He taught photography at the School of Fine Arts in Split. He was a mentor in the Little
School of Photography at OPUS and the Otok club in Dubrovnik. He has exhibited in numerous
solo and group exhibitions and lives and works in Split.

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