DIGITAL NATIVES

Digital Natives (2018-2021), a series of 32 color photographs by Tijana Pakic.

"Regardless of which of the many social fields they circulate in, photographs of children almost always carry an echo of inequality, because they are most often created in the world of adults. We have been taught that photographs of children, probably more than any other photographs, have a self-evident and indisputable purpose. Whether they are taken by parents or by professional photographers, some understandable a priori reasons, primarily related to family and growing up, almost always stand behind them. On the other hand, numerous photographs of children have been used in advertising and especially in the fashion industry, and the reasons behind their creation are completely clear.

These issues have been intensively explored in the portraits from the series Digital Natives, on which the Franco-Serbian artist Tijana Pakić has been working since 2018. The title of this work is related to the determining factor, i.e., the generation of children born in the 21st century for whom the digital world of computers and high-speed Internet is the normal environment. Despite the precisely formulated conception of the work, these dignified portraits of children do not invoke an easily accessible explanation. These straightforward and direct photographs represent serious and thoughtful young people aged between 7 and 11. Behind the carefully arranged studio portraits of the young Parisians stands an unobtrusive but obvious photographic skill, as well as an awareness and knowledge of the historical formulations of the portrait image. Discreet lighting, unpretentious poses and calm expressions – they are the elements with which Pakić creates her photographs which, despite the abundance of similar photographic representations, attract unequivocal intellectual attention."- excerpt from the text Digital Natives written by Mihailo Vasiljevic