Preface: Sandi Vidulić
Setting: Rino Efendić
Since 1978 has been going round the parts of Bačvice public baths, which at that time were deserted, he has been listening to the silence and the emptiness of taciturn objects, the environement deprived of people. That has been one of the characteristics of his photograph, depersonalized settings, places which once were made from people to people. The author's emotion has been sneaking into the neglected spaces, spaces designed for many people and metamorphosed into masses of silence. Thus Efendić is a photographer of silence, and his photographs are kind of a dialogue with the silence that keeps so many meanings. And yet is not a sentimental lamentation over the once famous pride of the modernist architecture and the favorite public baths of old Spliters. Efendić does not evoke memories of the expired period of fame, the speech is here about a private story that is not deprived of a specific fascination with the caught state of matters. Because Efendić does reveal aesthetic qualities in neglected places anddetails. The geometry of symmetrical slim shapes, the position of the light on the walls, the frames of selection, the entering of the lenses into the space, the adoption of that very space in the frame of the photograph...it all happens very silently and unobtrusively, the author does not wish to fascinate with the 'exoticism' of the setting, nor does he try to seduce with extravagance. It all happens without any raised tones, like some meditative photo session, a private ceremony that has not been designed for the eye of the public. (...)
Sandi Vidulić
Rino Efendić was born in 1961 in Sinj. He completed School of visual arts in Split. From 1981 to 1983 he studied camera at the Academy for film, theatre and television in Zagreb. From 1983 to 1988 he studied history of art and ethnology at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He worked in the 'BEPO Zenit' design studio in Sinj (from 1988 to 1990) and taught at the School of visual arts in Split (1990-1995). Since 1999 he has been leading the Little school of photography in OPUS and int the 'Otok – Dubrovnik' club.
