About the exhibition of Senka Trivunac and Sara Pantović: Everyday Banalities that showcases both artists’ profound interest in visual representations of their immediate surroundings, and in the significance of appearances in a world dominated by the visual media.
Monumental Landscapes [diSTRUKTURA]
The text was initially written for the Face to Face show by artist group diSTRUKTURA at Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography (Ljubljana) in 2009. The artistic practice of the group diSTRUKTURA (Milan Bosnić & Milica Milićević) is stretched across various creative approaches depending on the medium and on the…
When Victims Become Heroes: Propaganda Features in the Film Broj 55
About the Kristijan Milić’s heroic saga on the Croatian civil war (1991-1995) I somehow like genre of war films even though they are most often terribly biased. Their usual purpose is, unfortunately, pure propaganda. However, there are rare exceptions of war films which are ambivalent in their discourse dealing with…
Bitter Years at the Bitter Lake
Bitter Lake, a documentary directed by Adam Curtis, released on BBC iplayer in 2015. Adam Curtis has once more made a documentary which can be – without deliberating – proclaimed a masterpiece. Commissioned by BBC it has only been available online and has not been broadcast on TV. I have…
The Topography of Wars and Pogroms
Review of the Conflict, Time, Photography exhibition at Tate Modern in London – open until 15 March 2015! *initially published in Dnevnik daily newspaper in Slovenian language Almost endless number of acclaimed photographers who have in the past 150 years documented direct or indirect consequences of armed conflicts are presented…
Alexandra Polina and the Portraits of Her Time
This is a short response to the body of work of Alexandra Polina whose exhibition “Made In…” is currently on show at Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography in Ljubljana. In the past two decades number of contemporary artists have abundantly dealt with the phenomenon of migration. It often became…
Interiors of Power(lessness) [Bojan Salaj]
About the Bojan Salaj‘s Interiors-Correspondences project A few months ago, withing the framework of Photonic Moments festival in Ljubljana, Bojan Salaj mounted a show Interiors-Correspondences dealing with the visual insignia of power. The exhibition consisted of four big-format photographs showing ‘interiors of power’ in a symmetric rectangular formation that…
The Fall of the Dictator
About a year ago I found and hastily watched a three-hour documentary titled The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010) directed by Andrei Ujica. I was thrilled. The director managed to create something rare and extraordinary: he made an extensive documentary without narration and therefore without any comments. The understanding and…
The Banality of Image
This text was written for the catalogue of the Copy Paste exhibition which focuses on the practices of re-using found photography in the artistic / photographic context. The exhibition is open from 10 December 2014 to 16 January 2015 at Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography in Ljubljana and will…
Lecture: “Contemporary Photography as Engaged Artistic Practice”
Wednesday, 3 December at 7 pm; Mišnica GT22 in Maribor, Slovenia Through the talk Miha Colner will analyse the developments of contemporary war photography that has undergone immense changes over the past two decades. Although the emergence of digital media and internet has enabled immediate creation and sharing of images…