ABOUT DAMIR PILDEK
BIOGRAPHY
He began his photographic journey in 1975, as a fifteen-year-old boy, developing his first black-and-white films in an improvised darkroom. He made photographs on an enlarger that he assembled himself from an old camera, a converted condenser, and a light placed in an oil can. He took his first serious steps in photography in 1982 as a member of the Zagreb Photo Club, and has since exhibited at numerous joint exhibitions in Croatia and abroad.
In 1997, he embraced digital photography at a time when digital cameras were starting to appear on the market. The combination of electronics and photography encouraged him to explore new digital techniques. In 1998, he bought his first digital camera and has been actively involved in photography ever since.
In the early 2000s, he also began writing about photography and cameras, editing his online magazine Photopixel. He also writes professional reviews for domestic and foreign publications. In 2002, he began digitizing old documents, films, and large-format negatives at the Croatian State Archives.
That was when his return to analog photography began. Constant contact with old photographs and negatives from the 19th century further strengthened his love for analog photography. Overfed with digital technologies, he turned to traditional, old-fashioned analog techniques.
He is rebuilding and equipping a darkroom for analog photography and has begun to enjoy old photography techniques. Writing a blog and leading workshops dedicated to old analog techniques is just an addition and a desire to share his knowledge and experience in photography.
He made his ultra-large-format wooden camera (53x53 cm) and began making tintypes, ambrotypes, and glass negatives using the wet collodion technique. He perfected old processes such as Van Dyke, salt print, kallitype, cyanotype on glass, collodion chloride, carbon print, and gum oil print.
Damir actively participated in the preservation and promotion of old photographic techniques from the 19th and 20th centuries through many years of study and practical revival of these analog processes. He is dedicated to saving these old photography techniques from oblivion and reviving the craftsmanship and skills that have almost disappeared in the modern era.
His work has both an artistic and educational character, expressing respect for the original values and specific aesthetics of old techniques that provide a completely different visual impression and atmosphere compared to digital photography. By organizing solo exhibitions, he presents photographs made with various old techniques, thus showing a wide range of their visual and technical characteristics. Through his public appearances, lectures, workshops, and artistic works, he contributes to raising awareness, promoting these techniques, and preserving photographic cultural heritage.
He is also the author of professional concepts related to exhibitions and museum activities, for example, in the Sisak City Museum, which confirms his engagement in the institutional promotion and protection of historical photographic processes.
In short, Damir Pildek works as a practitioner, artist, researcher, and educator who, through exhibitions, cooperation with museums, and his artistic work, revives, promotes, and preserves the intangible cultural heritage of old photographic techniques in Croatia.
For his contribution, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia recognized him as one of the bearers of intangible cultural heritage - the art of making photographs using historical photographic techniques.
