Location: Photo Club Split

Date: August 2 - August 23, 2023

Ana Matijaca exhibits at the Photo Club Split Photography Gallery

At the Photo Club Split Photography Gallery, on Wednesday, August 2, 2023, at 8:00 PM, a solo exhibition by Ana Matijaca will open. In 2020, Matijaca had the opportunity to exhibit her photographs at the Photo Club Split Photography Gallery, and now she returns with a new exhibition titled "Life with boys." The thirty displayed photographs document everyday life, her experience of motherhood, and the growth of children - ordinary and small moments that compose life.

Curator Ana Žanko writes in the exhibition preface: "...Each of us has the need to identify key places, decisive events that further form the timeline of our existence, forgetting that life is what happens in between, seemingly insignificant details that together form the mosaic of someone's being. In this context, one of the great, if not the greatest thing in a woman's life, is undoubtedly motherhood and the whole array of changes it brings into a woman's life. From physical, social to emotional changes, the experience of motherhood permanently determines and irreversibly changes a woman. Matijaca transposes the experience of motherhood into a photographic narrative in which her maternal figure is not present; we detect it solely through its absence, as an intuitive sense of a present absence - the mother's figure is not in the photographs; moreover, it is entirely excluded from the moment - but we feel that she is there, hiding behind the lens."

The exhibition "Life with boys" is a playful cycle, dynamic, and infused with emotions. Matijaca's photographs capture moments of real life that will captivate the viewers and remind them that the beauty and magic of life lie precisely in the details that are often unjustly overlooked.

Ana Matijaca was born on September 7, 1987, in Trogir. She graduated in French language and literature and linguistics from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, where she lived for many years before moving to Split in 2015. She started engaging in photography quite accidentally in 2017, after the birth of her two sons, encouraged by her husband, who entrusted her with his old Nikon (for which she will be forever grateful). She mainly focuses on documentary family photography and occasionally street photography, paying special attention to the study of light and shadow dynamics, color relationships, and composition. She was one of the finalists in the American competition Voice 2019, and in 2020, three of her photographs were published in Click magazine and later exhibited in a group exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia. The same magazine included her in the list of 100 female photographers to watch in 2020. She had the honor of presenting her work to the Split audience in 2020 with her first solo exhibition titled "Mediterranean unplugged."

The exhibition is realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media, the City of Split, the Split-Dalmatia County, and is part of the program "Regular Annual Program of the Photo Club Split Association," which is funded by the support of the "Kultura nova" Foundation. The exhibition will remain open until August 23 and can be visited during the working hours of the Photography Gallery.