Vanja Bućan
ABOUT THE SERIES
In the series Sequences of Truth and Deception (2015–2019) the author explores, as
per her outlook on the subject, our ambivalent relationship to nature ruled by
domination, exploration, and, paradoxically, its idealisation. In the anonymous portraits
and still lifes, Bučan strives to create a complex and a deconstructed vision of nature.
The photographs in the series appear as playful sketches of our conditional and “exotic”
love of nature. In contradiction to the incessant pollution inflicted by the contemporary
way of life on our planet, many people still demonstrate various actions of minimal
concern for the environment (i.e. planting trees, recycling, caring for endangered
species, etc.), which only insignificantly affect our dire environmental reality. This series
demonstrates this duality between our domination over nature and, on the other hand,
our romanticisation of it. You could view Sequences of Truth and Deception as the
author’s allegory of anthropocentrism, where it is difficult to discern whether the
photographs depict love or domination. The series successfully introduces Bučan’s
concept of “imaginary personal ecologies” through abstraction and various metaphors,
where human presence is suggested only through isolated body parts, which in
ambivalent settings enact various conceptual “situations”.