Searching for Sergei
2020
These images are based on a semi-fictional story following a soviet astronaut who became stranded on the MIR space station in orbit, during a major geopolitical change in December 1991. Meanwhile, a little boy who was stuck on Earth during the same period experienced a nightmare, the anxiety of waking up from it, and the moment he fully became aware of his own mortality for the first time. These two characters never meet in real life, but there is an imaginary connection between them that emerges in the work. The images themselves evoke existential questions rather than simply illustrate an event.
Josef Kovac (1982) is currently living and working in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he recently graduated in MFA in photography at the HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design. His main means of artistic expression is the photographic image. Kovac is interested in the relationship between images and fiction, and our psychological perception of it.
