The series of photographs called Personals (2004-2006) aims at investigating and playing with the phenomenon of self-advertisement - people who send images of themselves to magazines or Internet sites, in the hope of finding a suitable partner. It seems enough for a start to have a photograph, the 'right' and the most representative one, whether it was taken especially for the occasion or chosen among some long discarded family or holiday snaps. Now, every one is given a chance to be represented in the 'ideal light', at least in this artificial space of collective privacy.

The characters in these photographs are unprofessional actors who, by posing as if they are being photographed for their own personal ads, impersonate aspirants to 'happiness in love'. With a touch of humour, they symbolise various degrees of self-awareness, attractiveness and sexuality. The 'right' photograph points to the fact that the whole process of self-advertising is based primarily on visual appeal. Deliberate parodies, the portraits of these people are the result of the photographic fiction – fiction that creates a critical distance in order that, paradoxically, certain phenomena may be more accurately perceived.

By staging her series of fictive personal ads, Radović investigates the very gap between the unconscious aspirations of average 'advertisers' , which she so cleverly brings to expression in the images, and their surface appearances, which is so often in collision with the viewer's expectations. Radović plays with and parodies the sprectrum of culturally coded models of representations of the desirable (and desiring) subject. Yet, her carefully staged images, with all the appropriate settings, props and costumes, retain a certain offbeat quality, resembling casual snapshots, which makes them even more poignant and attractive on the visual level.

Paula Muhr, photographer and interdisciplinary researcher

Looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right has never seemed so hopeless and, at the same time, so much worth the effort, as in the photographs of Katarina Radović. The heroes of her photo story are very courageous in transferring their private problems into the public realm and, although they are doing it in a somewhat bizzare way, we cannot help showing them respect. What is more, no one can predict the course of real love.

Marina Martić, art historian