In this photographic project, I explore the ever-changing river landscapes in Kaunas, Lithuania, and Valladolid, Spain. Here, the river is not perceived merely as a natural phenomenon. Its flow and the landscape it shapes have long attracted people who assign symbolic meaning to this natural force. I am interested in how rivers influence the behavior of those who live alongside them and the unique narratives of life in search of harmony, balance, and coexistence with nature. I aim to explore the dialogue between culture and nature and how we can bring nature into our contemporary lives.

I wanted to position myself within the river landscape to reflect on the transience of things and consider what the river offers me and what offers to those who live with this landscape.

Darija Jelinčić

“The river is within us, the sea is all about us,” wrote T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets, reminding us of the inevitable merging of the individual with the world around them. This world is not only human society but the entirety of the living and non-living universe from which humanity emerged. Darija Jelinčić searched for places where our internal currents flow into the sea of reality, photographing rivers and the people who live along them. Their everyday, ordinary urban and suburban lives gain a surprising aura in the intense light of her photographs. Perhaps this light is the subtle yet powerful presence of the river, that “strong brown god” (to quote Eliot again), hidden in the harmony between people and their environment.

For light is like flowing water. Gentle in its lazy and unstoppable spread across the world, yet unpredictably cruel – revealing things we would rather leave unknown, pulling us into whirlpools of anxiety. Light allows us to see the world, to become aware of its beauty and repulsiveness, its impermanence and transience. And we, like the subjects in these photographs, stand in the light and are part of it, as it caresses us and as we burn within it. Darija reminds us that we are thrown into this river of reality and can surrender to its flow.

Feđa Gavrilović