Prelude

2015

In the photo series Prelude, I explore how it is – and how it was – to be a child. When time is still not important. When seeing is believing, when what we hear, smell, taste, and touch creates lasting memories that we carry with us for the rest of our lives.

Prelude is both a document of the childhood of my children and a representation of my reflections on my own childhood. The moments I capture are often universal experiences many children might have, those many adults can recognise and identify with. All the flowers photographed in this series were gifts from my son.

To me, colour fits better with the present, black and white lends a more timeless feel to images. When I work with film, I work more deliberately, concentrating on each and every shot because I only have ten shots before changing film. This compels me to better focus on the subject and always remain connected to it.

I am drawn to everyday surroundings, no matter how simple, and to things that move or remind me of a feeling or an atmosphere. There is a comforting beauty in the everyday, and by photographing this beauty, I can embrace and enlarge it, and share it with others.

Madeleine Kukic graduated from the School of Fine Art and Design in St. Joost, The Netherlands, in 1994. Since then, she has worked as an independent photographer and visual artist. After an interim period devoting herself to her young family, she started taking photographs again in 2014. As this period represents a new beginning, she only exhibits new work produced since, especially as it reflects her constant need to record amazement at the things she sees. Like a poet, she tries to capture a feeling or an atmosphere in her work, finding photography ideally suited to this method, because while it relates directly to reality, it also offers opportunities to refract and filter her personal reality. For Madeleine, photography has become an important means of expression and reflection, while at once grounding and comforting her.