They say a person dies twice. The first time when their heart stops, and the second time when their name is spoken for the last time. In our digital age, this second death seems almost impossible. We are all archived, tagged, entered into infinite databases. But what about those who existed before the ones and zeros?
Type “Julka Adamov” or “Vasa Adamov” into a search engine. You will find almost nothing. There is no digital footprint. No profiles, no scanned documents, no entries in digital registries. By modern standards, they are slowly fading.
But they existed. And for that, there is one, single, unshakeable piece of physical proof.
On the old road between Aradac and Elemir, a grandiose oak tree stands alone. Beneath it, in the shade of its branches, lies a modest stone monument with a cross. I spoke with Dušan Bojanić, a keeper of stories from that region and a guardian of memories of the families and people who once lived there. He believes the oak was planted sometime between 1840 and 1850 (there are no written records).
That is it. That is their entire trace in the present day. The oak they planted and the stone they raised. Legends about them do exist – whether the monument was erected due to the tragic death of a grandson at a well that once stood there, or to mark their move from Elemir to Aradac – but nothing is confirmed. The internet is silent about them.
The only thing we know for sure is that Julka and Vasa Adamov existed, and that they wanted to leave a trace. The oak they planted is now a giant, a guardian of their name, alive for almost two centuries. It is their story.
When I stood there, I felt the weight of the place. A sense of time and transience, but also of incredible resilience. I took the photograph in 2016 on 6×6 format film—Svema film, which had expired back in 1992—capturing the moment the sun broke through the canopy of that guardian tree.
Years later, that negative ended up in my darkroom.
And this is where a new magic happens.
Under the red light, in the silence broken only by the sound of water, the process of revival began. A sheet of paper submerged in the developer is blank, like the oblivion we fight against. And then, slowly, shapes begin to emerge from the liquid. First the sky, and then, as if someone is carving them into stone once more, the dark silhouette of the cross and the powerful branches of the oak appear.
In that moment, I am not just making a picture of a tree. I am summoning Julka and Vasa Adamov back into the present.
Every time the image appears in the developer, their name is read again. Every print that comes out of the darkroom is another voice that says: “You existed.”
This photograph, handmade on silver-gelatin paper, is not just an aesthetic object. It is materialized memory. In a world where the digital fades and disappears into the noise of information, this physical, analog print becomes a more permanent proof.
I decided to make a strictly limited edition of 10 of these prints. Each one is handmade, signed, and numbered. Each one is a way for the story of Julka and Vasa to continue.
When someone hangs this print on their wall, they are not just hanging a picture of a tree. They become part of the story and a new guardian of the memory of two people and the oak from the old Aradac-Elemir road.
As long as we remember them, Julka and Vasa Adamov have not died their second death.
