The Multiplicity of Conceptual Photography

Dr. Sc. Sandra Križić Roban is participating with a lecture entitled “Realistic, Documentary, Truthful, Manipulative – The Multiplicity of Conceptual Photography” at the international symposium MAJ 75, which is being held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb on 11th and 12th of June 2025 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first exhibition-action of the Group of Six authors (Mladen Stilinović, Vlado Martek, Željko Jerman, Boris Demur, Sven Stilinović, Fedor Vučemilović). The work of the Group of Six authors is marked by active joint and individual work after the Gorgona group and research into new media, and in the interspaces of new artistic practices, conceptual, post-conceptual and contemporary art. Symposium program here.

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The lecture focuses on the various levels of representation in conceptual photography – from early proto-conceptual appearances in the medium of magazines and hand-made interventions into the ‘body’ of the photograph, through ordinary, often ‘boring’ scenes used to document events, to constructed images that arise when the camera takes over the production of images from the artist’s hands, leaving the artist in control (only) of the idea.

As in many other contexts, conceptual photography in Croatia emerged in the early 1960s and reached its peak during the 1970s. This period in the history of post-war photography is often interpreted through the lens of mass media, which introduced new ways of using the medium. The artists of the Group of Six, among others, contributed to this shift by employing photography as a vehicle for conveying ideas. In doing so, the characteristics of the medium often spilled beyond the boundaries defined by photographic theory and criticism.

Within the context of conceptual art, photography remains anchored in the loose framework of an idea. In the works of Mladen Stilinović, Željko Jerman, and Vlado Martek, for example, language is frequently introduced to expand the concept of the photographic image. The artist’s realistic self is placed in opposition to a society manipulated precisely through the media – where photography gives up its claim to depict only objective truth.

As we observe these works, we reflect on what lies behind the objects – on the instructions that may have guided their creation – while the final material form becomes secondary. Reconfigurations of meaning, investigations of process (such as the status of time), and various forms of erosion have pushed photography to its very edge – an edge that will be explored through the work of the Group of Six and their contemporaries.

This activity is the result of work on the project FEMO – Phenomena of Croatian Artistic Modernity, led by Dr. Ivana Mance Cipek at the Institute of Art History in the period 2023–2027, under the European Union program NextGenerationEU.

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Contact: Sandra Križić Roban

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