(This is the story behind the photograph, a glimpse into the moment, the process, and the vision that brought it to life.)
One snowy night, Olga Karlovac turned silence into a photograph.
She walked alone on a small hill above Požega in Croatia while the snow kept falling in the dark. In just half an hour, she made four or five images of the quiet and empty place, with almost no editing. The old wooden houses and empty vineyards around her were barely visible, but they became part of the pictures.
The snowstorm was unexpected, but Olga did not stop.
The snow was slippery and she got very wet, but she kept shooting. With her Ricoh GR, she photographed the shapes, the shadows and the empty space of the hill. She did not plan the pictures. They happened intuitively. By the time she went back, she had a small set of images, and four or five of them later went into her book.
Late March brought an unexpected return of snow to the hill above Požega, a small Croatian town. Spring was close, and nobody expected snow anymore. On the hilltop, only a few old wooden houses stood among empty vineyards. Most of the time, no one was there.
That night, Olga Karlovac was at a house where friends were having a party. She took her Ricoh GR and went out alone into the snowstorm.
“This is one of the images from the sequence called The Hill. The whole night was inspiring for me,” she says. “I made those four or five images within half an hour, which is very unusual for me. It happened in total darkness, where the snow gave just enough light to create this mood. It was completely in line with how I felt.”
The few houses and vineyards were barely visible in the dark.
“A few old houses, a few old vineyards, a little bit of snow. It was late March, a time when you don’t expect this. I think these images really reflect the mood.”
She used her camera in high contrast mode. The blacks became very black and the whites very white, with almost no gray.
“They were made with a Ricoh GR, and there is not much secret. I used the high contrast mode and very little post-production. Just a little bit of contrast and cropping.”
There was a lot of snow, and the ground was very slippery. “I got very wet, and it was very funny,” she remembers. In the images, the hill is almost empty: no people, a little light and a lot of dark space.
“I think they tell a story, the story of the hill and the storm. When you look at them, you get a feeling of loneliness. A place without people, with just a little bit of light and a lot of negative space. Something a little bit out of the earth.”
The hill itself was simple, yet inspiring. “It’s a small hill above a small town called Požega, with a few old wooden houses and basically nothing else. It looks very rural. In a way, that was inspiring, because it’s not what you usually find on the street.”
She worked alone in the middle of the night, but she did not feel afraid. “I had friends in the house. They were having a party, but I just left. It’s a very secure place, and no one is there. It’s safe.”
That night she made about twenty images for the chapter. Four or five of them ended up in the book.
“The whole sequence reminds me of that night. It was very special to me because it just happened intuitively, and I never expected it. I believe it was the only time I was shooting there, and I never came back to the area. And so many of the images ended up in the book. So the night felt special.”
She never went back to that hill. The snow melted, but the images stayed, showing the hill as it looked for one night.
Later, Olga tried to put the feeling of that night into words. The short text she wrote fell together with the images of the chapter, and it ends with the title of her book:
“Above the sky, just there where you are, elsewhere.”
