Sale

I sometimes escape the city’s turbulence by retreating into forgotten and hidden areas. In them I began noticing furniture pieces from someone’s living room, a bar, a hotel foyer, grandma’s room or a hallway, evicted from their “original environment” into open spaces under open skies. I intuitively began photographing them without any intervention in the scene. The desire to own often dominates over legitimate requirements. It creates a fertile ground for chain stores to plant their seeds of artificial needs to flood markets and our lives with unnecessary clutter. Carefully planned scenography in furniture and home accessories catalogues sell not only goods but life styles and comforting to fill both spatial and emotional voids. At the same time, internet portals are reporting on inadequate disposal of bulky communal waste in Zagreb. As a photographer and graphic designer, this discrepancy gave me the motivation to breathe a sort of new life into discarded furniture, at least in a visual way, by utilizing the same methodology and medium used by chain stores inviting us to purchase. The aim of the standard catalogue is sales. This one has a different purpose. My furniture pieces do not have people names, instead, they are named after locations at which they were found. The enticing project name, “Sale”, was chosen to seduce the “buyer” to come closer to look at the photographs and flip through the catalogue. However, the primary goal is a consumerism memento mori, evoking images from days past of these now used and abandoned pieces of life’s inventory.