Dubrovnick
Artist statement
As I walked through the walls of the ancient city, Dubrovnik provoked inside of me, many sensations. With the passage of time, I attempted to capture these feelings in this book, which is at once a proposition, a search and a photographic essay.
The city with its textures and history can set the visitor's pace has it did on me. It is walled town with no army or king; always a place of attraction, beauty, mystery and desire. Dubrovnik was a point of balance between the West and the East. A gateway to a place of magic, which provocatively, always transport the visitor through time. Walking the Stradum, stepping on every Stria stone, one daydreams as if this sensation has always been there, for everyone and throughout time. Mentioning the Stria stone is not a mere detail, it's the raw material so often sought by empires to build what was the most beautiful, most precious building stone. Itīs magnificence is felt in its silky texture, in the gloss of the polished stone, its color of liquid sand, somewhere between beige and cream that changes magically by time of day.
All this frames and the dreamlike tone on which I wanted to give the book. A succession of images marked by a rhythm of cadenza and pauses, trying to show the most pure essence of the place, more than being its precise guide. I used the Photographs as representations of these sensations and feelings, offering to preserve them in our memory along with the city itself.
Fernando Espinosa Chauvin
March 2011