My name is Ivana Stojakovic, I live and work in Belgrade, Serbia.
A friend of mine, who is a photographer, introduced me to Flickr two years ago and that did it for me. My journey with photography began. Until then my interest in photography was limited to appreciation of its beautiful elements, but then I realized that it just might be a whole new field of my artistic expression.
 
As I got to know more and more about possibilities in photography, I spontaneously came to the photomontage. I like to explore, learn, experiment, and all of these I can apply in just one photo. That becomes my vision of the world at the time of the creation of all the parts of a whole - an image.
 
The world is complex, and so my picture of the world at any given moment has to be complex. It's just a living image of my inner experience. It was not enough for me to just use the camera to capture and freeze reality, I had much to add to it. And so it has turned out that it is surreal. It gives me immense opportunities to explore my own self, in a better way than through any actual analysis. In this way, I get the answers on how I feel and how much I can recall. The same as with dreams, which are a reflection of our deep subconscious so - when their parts are put together into a meaningful whole, we get a clear picture of ourselves.
 
I think that one is unique as much as he/she is able to describe his/her imagination, as he/she manages to capture and portray it. In one way or the other.
 
As in everyday life, which is made up of ordinary things, I use ordinary elements and, by putting them in a relationship that I choose, I tell my story.
 
Anyone who finds beauty in my photography will find their own reasons and their own stories in it. The meaning is not limited and fixed in what I imagined. What I imagined is my story. And everyone else can discover their own.
 
That's the beauty of surrealism - if we stick to this term - it makes every one of us hold the glance and think about what they see. And this is both my desire and intention.
 
The essential hallmarks of any creator are originality and recognizability. And that's just one’s own language that is unique to only that one person and no one else, and that is the result of one’s thoughts and feelings. It's one’s personal stamp.
 
Without continuous experimentation, the development of technical skills would be impossible. It’s like when you have a topic you have to write an essay on, and so you explore, read and think. This long-term thinking ultimately leads you to the conclusion that is as original as the amount of knowledge you acquired about the topic. The emergence of new ideas comes afterwards. When the idea is coupled with good workmanship, without complicated symbols that are distant and unrecognizable to people, it may come to a point where you say to yourself that this is it.
 
Imagination is endless, and the world that you can find in your inner world is unique.