The Mudderland

This is a unique road-book and a speechless ode to a place I used to love and remember dearly. But after the years of political and economic turbulence, and with its name being dragged through mud, this marginalized, eroded landscape of central Serbia became completely foreign to me. This bitter reality captured in the photos transcends the local identity and could serve as an epitome of Global South decay.

The book is composed of a series of consecutive panoramic photographs taken from the bus. The pictures were printed as inkjet prints and stitched together into a single scroll of a continuous landscape. The book block was treated with polyurethane and acrylics. In conclusion, gray oil-paint sludge was added on and wiped off as an intaglio printing method. The book mimics the shape of an industrial cable spool, covered with paper finished with a frottage of the wood texture. It is tied with a rope at which beginning a gold painted flower symbolizes the growth still being possible. The book is cased in a round box 5.5 inches high and in diameter. It was produced in 2019.