This long-term project, whose title was inspired by the quote from the American actor George Burns – “I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty“, is a collection of photographs taken at various locations from the outset of the new millennium up to this day. All the photographs were shot with analogue cameras, using colour films that had expired 10 to 20 or more years before they were actually used.

By deliberately using old film, in a game with Time, technology and the imposed speed of life, I try to evoke a sense of nostalgia for that lightheartedness which we seem to have lost, a leisure and freedom, and a certain purity which, despite all the imperfections – signs of transience and decay – speak of an escape from the falsely embellished realities which are constantly being served up to us today. The resulting vivid colours, and the sharp contrast between the bright sunlight suggestive of eternity and the shadows that hover as if condensing the melancholy of everyday life, reflect in these images various peculiar, sincere, amusing or poignant ‘frozen moments’ of a carefree past, of a human 'comfort zone', now threatened by the unstable present we live in. 

As someone who is generationally halfway between the 1960s days of hope and sexual liberation, with all their youthful rebelliousness and innocent idealism, and the accelerated globalisation and automation of the contemporary world, which are seriously altering the nature of human interactions and fostering the instant gratification mentality, I still enjoy discovering a magic in the ordinary moments of real life. And this is the past that I miss – when it seemed that we had time for everything, that all problems could somehow eventually be solved, when the air was cleaner, and human relationships were more filled with longing.

Katarina Radović experiments with the past. With the atmosphere evoked by the colour palette and the contrasts within the photographs, she consciously tries to summon up emotions of nostalgia and melancholy.

Although originally the term 'nostalgia' meant suffering for a certain faraway space (home), today nostalgic feelings predominantly mean regret for a certain elapsed time. Could time be the home we suffer for? Yes, indeed. But there is no going backwards in time. Exile in time is eternal. It is a pain without a location. A nowhere pain. And it is anxiety about the present, and about the end of time.

Slađana Petrović Varagić, art historian and film producer