An uncanny imagination, conceptually articulated through bizarre, surreal, provocative, enigmatic and allegorical photographic imagery, has indelibly marked the prolific oeuvre of Mario Lalich, an art photographer of considerable international standing. Lalich came to prominence in the United States, residing in New York and Portland between 1987 and 2003. It was in New York, in the late 1980s, that he began working in photography, having identified it as the most accessible and natural medium for expressing his own creativity.
Following his move to Portland on the west coast of the USA in 1991, his photographic signature reached full maturity. He worked in a genre-fluid field of art photography, progressively achieving recognition in portrait, advertising and fashion work. When directing his highly aestheticised pieces, he pre-conceived the narrative scene with a pronounced visual character. He treated the setting as a significant element of the content, positioning his models in dilapidated and derelict spaces or, conversely, in grand and opulent interiors. For his outdoor work, by contrast, he shoots in picturesque and striking natural and urban locations. This exceptional attention to scenography is matched by an equally careful conception of the appearance of the scene’s participants – from clothing and footwear to the accompanying props. As a rule, he does not title his photographs, leaving the observer entirely free to interpret them.
In parallel with his mastery of technical aspects and sophisticated understanding of lighting, Lalich examines the expressive potential of the medium through a range of visualisation methods. He creates black-and-white photographs, which he frequently tones in beige or sepia, or hand-colours, adopting a trend that was exceptionally popular among art photographers in the USA in the late eighties and early nineties. From the second half of the nineties, and increasingly towards the turn of the millennium, he embraced colour photography and digital technology, from the use of contemporary cameras to computer-based image editing.
In staging scenes with participants of varying age, gender and physical appearance, Lalich develops his own distinctive visual language and iconology. Their origins, inspirations or references can be traced to Greek mythology, Christian iconography, the stylistic epochs of art history, the history of photography and film, but equally to contemporary social phenomena – from the refined aesthetics of the fashion industry to the raw character of street style and alternative subcultures.
Owing to his striking and idiosyncratic works, especially those depicting the bizarre and the grotesque, he received a prestigious award from the respected visual communications magazine Communication Arts in 1996, in the Best Self-Promotion category. This recognition, together with inclusion in its influential annual (Communication Arts Photography Annual 37), were secured by a photograph of an overweight nude woman holding a gun.
This was Lalich’s first major international confirmation of his photographic skill and authenticity. It had a decisive impact on his career, positioning him among the most sought-after photographers in the advertising industry. Besides the financial windfall, the award brought him prestige and opened doors to film and music icons of the independent scene in Portland and beyond, including director Gus Van Sant and the band Pink Martini.
Shortly before returning to New York, in August 1999, his short black-and-white black comedy film Davenport had its premiere at Cinema 21 in Portland. The film was inspired by his own anecdote concerning an inadvertently burnt sofa which he had unsuccessfully attempted to dispose of.
Back in New York, he produced several highly successful, stylised images of the absurd, including the world-famous Astronaut (2000), showing an astronaut climbing out of a manhole in Manhattan.
With his wife and young daughter, he witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. A few days later, together with journalist Antun Masle, he toured and photographed the aftermath of the terrorist attack. With the exception of a handful of images subsequently published in Globus alongside Masle’s article, Lalich subsequently declined to publish or exhibit the scenes he had captured, refusing to profit from the tragic fate of the victims. This event proved decisive for the entire family, who moved to Split in 2003, and later to Tučepi.
Back home and free of commercial pressures, he turned his digital lens on the scenes around him, mostly in and around Split. He is fascinated by sunsets, unusual cloud formations, the sea in various weather conditions, solitary walkers, ships both at sea and on land, and empty beaches strewn with abandoned objects or marked by aggressive, devastating machinery. “A kind of photo-diary (…) of everyday life, devoid of any direct human presence,” was partially presented by Lalich in 2018 at the Museum of Fine Arts, as part of the exhibition Post-Season Observations, in which 285 photographs were projected sequentially across three large screens.
His subsequent exhibition, The Secret Life of Abandoned Walls, staged at the “Josip Račić” Gallery in Zagreb in 2021, attracted particular attention. It featured 27 photographs capturing details of derelict and abandoned spaces. Between 2019 and 2021, during walks with his dog, Lalich photographed the visual traces of mould on damp walls. These images, some richly coloured, others chromatically restrained, resembling abstract (and occasionally figurative) paintings, yielded remarkably striking results.
With this exhibition, due recognition from the Croatian media and public finally arrived. Sadly, it was to be Lalich’s last exhibition.
Three years after Mario Lalich’s untimely passing, and with the cooperation of his family, the Museum of Fine Arts is staging a monographic exhibition featuring more than a hundred works, created between the late 1980s and the final chapter of his life in 2023. With an emphasis on his American period, the exhibition offers one of several possible approaches to presenting the body of work of this highly regarded photographer, distinguished by a singular artistic sensibility.
Mario Lalich (Lalić) was born on 2 February 1965 in Split. From 1987 to 2003 he lived in the United States, based first in New York and later in Portland, Oregon. He took up photography in the late 1980s in New York, and after moving to Portland in 1991 his practice shifted towards meticulously directed, highly aestheticised conceptual photography, featuring bizarre, surreal, provocative and allegorical themes, while at the same time developing a distinctive style in portrait, advertising and fashion photography.
He held his first solo exhibition in 1993 at Portland’s Cinema 21. While in Portland, he wrote the Croatian-language lyrics for the song U plavu zoru by the band Pink Martini, released on their second album (Hang on Little Tomato, 2004). In 1996 he won the prestigious Communication Arts magazine award in the Best Self-Promotion category. In August 1999, again at Cinema 21, he premiered his short, black-and-white black-comedy film Davenport.
He then returned to New York, where he produced a series of successful, stylised images of the absurd. His work has been published in leading American and international print media, including The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times and Cartier.
On 11 September 2001, he witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Centre and subsequently photographed the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack.
He returned to Split in 2003 with his wife and daughter, and the family soon grew with the birth of twins – a son and a daughter. In his home town he founded the marketing agency Poliklynika and went on to establish successful collaborations with institutions such as the Croatian National Theatre in Split and the Zagreb Film Festival. The focus of his work then shifted to capturing everyday scenes in Split and its surroundings through a digital lens, which he presented to the public in 2018 at the exhibition Post-Season Observations at the Museum of Fine Arts in Split. His final exhibition, The Secret Life of Abandoned Walls, which explored the processes of mould growth through a highly aestheticised lens, was staged with great success in 2021 at the “Josip Račić” Gallery in Zagreb.
Mario Lalich died on 26 July 2023 at his home in Tučepi.
We gratefully acknowledge the family of Mario Lalich for lending the works and for their assistance in realising the exhibition.