Today, July 4th, photographer Ivo Sekulovski and Commerce (Milan, Italy) present his first photobook Down the Jade Mountain, published by Art Paper Editions. The book is a concise exploration of identity crises across person, artist, family, country, and photography itself. Living in Italy and wrestling with belonging, Sekulovski embarked on a project in his hometown Ohrid, North Macedonia.
The book reads like a series of visual riddles, every page bustling with hints and symbols; some universally readable, some deeply and irredeemably personal. In it, Ivo explores and dissects his family dynamics, the multitude of cultures that compose his native country, and his scattered sense of self while all the time playing with the ever-conflicted relationship between photography, reality, and truth.
With an unsettling ability to blur the lines between all these themes, we see family archival images intersecting with staged images of his parents and immaculate, eerie still lives. The medium suits the story—images hold mystery, blurring reality. Ivo’s play with photography raises questions on time, truth, memory, and
reality.
Ivo Sekulovski (b. 1992, Ohrid, North Macedonia) is a visual artist using photography to investigate and question the notions of culture, territory and identity, while addressing the ideas of absurdist theatre and ambiguity, often altering objects’ function and their purpose. His oeuvre lies between the realms of observational and staged photography, facts and fiction, the real and virtual that crosses from set arrangements he makes, the use of re-combining and appropriation practices to use of 3D images, whilst his final output remains mostly photographic. Sekulovski lives in Milan.