Janez
Bogataj:
The eighties. A
decade of (cultural) transition.
Photographic
exhibition
The richness and diversity of cultural
events, especially in the socio-politically turbulent eighties of the 20th
century, is the common thread of Janez Bogataj's new exhibition. The
selection of his black-and-white photographs reveals a view of new approaches
to artistic production, traditional cultural currents, their intertwining and
involvement in the intense dynamics of the time and space of that time. A wide range of portraits of both official and alternative culture,
whom the photographer followed professionally and privately, is captured in
moments of informal gatherings, in the middle of the work process or during
planned portraits.
With his eternal search for difference and
compositional innovation, Bogataj took the photographs in various roles and
creative periods. Professionally as a
photographer for the weekly Mladina, informally as a member of the eternally
frivolous Fotogrupa M, and privately as Janez Bogataj, who is particularly fond
of literary art.
The common denominator of the exhibition is
diversity. The
almost incompatible motifs of the lively Ljubljana alternative scene and the
focus of professors of the Academy of Fine Arts during their annual work
excursion, remind us once again that diversity
has always been enriching and unifying in tolerant social environments.
The photographs on
display are part of the photographic collection of Janez Bogataj, which is kept
by the National Museum of Contemporary History.