Durmitor is the first zone within ECHO, a long-term artistic research project dedicated to places of heightened presence, altered perception, and unmapped forces. Located in the mountains of Montenegro, Durmitor is a landscape where my perception of the soul of place becomes unusually stable and intense. I experience it as a living field: a body made of forests, lakes, stone, darkness, wind, silence, and hidden currents. My work with Durmitor begins through full immersion. I walk its trails, stay for long periods in specific points where the atmosphere becomes stronger. I photograph, listen, swim in the lakes, climb mountains, wander through woods, observe changes in light, weather, sound, and inner state. I collect small artifacts from the territory: stones, branches, fragments of matter that seem to carry the character of the place.
Through this process, I absorb the force of Durmitor as deeply as I can. The fieldwork is physical, sensory, emotional, and ritual. It is a way of entering the territory with the whole body, allowing the landscape to act upon perception before it becomes image, object, sound, or text. In this zone, the presence of the landscape is continuous. It moves across the territory as a dense atmosphere, while certain points gather this intensity more sharply and begin to feel almost individual. The strongest point of this perception is the Black Lake, especially at night.
For me, the Black Lake is the dark eye of Durmitor: a deep, watchful center where the force of the landscape gathers and looks back. Its presence is felt as depth, attraction, and silent contact. It holds something of the whole territory inside itself, as if the mountain, forest, stone, night, and water had concentrated there into one dark gaze. After each encounter with Durmitor, I transform the accumulated impressions into art. The photographs become constructed images through multiple exposure, layering, post-processing, and painterly intervention. They are assembled from fragments of real encounters, gradually moving toward painting and carrying the inner state of the place. The paintings continue this process through matter, memory, and direct immersion in the atmosphere that remains after leaving the territory. The collected artifacts become material cores for small figures and spirits of place.
DURMITOR combines photography, painting, text, sound, field notes, perceptual mapping, gathered objects, temporary ritual interventions, and repeated returns to the same locations. Durmitor itself remains larger than any single image or object: a territory with a soul, a living field whose force can be approached, absorbed, transformed, and partially given form.
Black Lake in nowember.
When I saw this place I had a feel I m in some fairytale.
Misty mountains of Durmitor.
In the night you can see thousands of stars shining upon. You realise how big universe is and how small you are.
This niner was just perfect fit for the mount trip.
