Malcolm

Photography exhibition by ANA STRAŽE

WHAT: Celje FOKUS; Festival of authorial photography

WHERE: Apartment on 19 Stanetova Street, Celje

WHEN: 2.7. - 15.7. 2016

Organizer: Celje FOKUS in collaboration with the Company Nepremicnine Celje d. o .o. (non-profit housing organization)

Exhibition Curator: Matija Plevnik

During several months of living in Scotland in 2015, the author got acquainted with Malcolm. Graduate getting-to-know each other, stimulated by relaxing atmosphere, spontaneity and curiosity, led to friendship between the two. Thus, a series of intimate, (un)usual documentary photographs gradually arose, which present sensitive anatomy of Malcolm’s life. The series depicts the portrayed man and his every day environment in a fresh and relaxed way. Ana Straže changes between portrait and documentary photography in this series and at the point of the passage between the two types, a narrative poetics enters, which enables the viewer a completely independent reading of individual photographs and the series itself. Sincerity, homely feelings and as a consequence non-ambitiousness, reflecting from the photographs, present the undisputed qualities, which are her regular features and at the same time witness about author’s creative maturity.

The exhibition is set in an abandoned old middle-class apartment, which literally calls for retreat from “classical” exhibition set. The concept of the projects leads to a playful youthful world, which reveals abandoned rooms and simultaneously creates its own phantasms and stories. The photographs are intentionally placed in rooms in such a manner that every visitor must find them in an individual room with a flashlight. In this way, the visitors/explorers create their own rhythm and dynamics of the exhibition place and consequentially the intensity of room perception changes and blends with the exhibited photographs into a space-time whole. Through the rooms in the apartment, the exhibition is accompanied by audio record of Malcolm’s personal narration, which supports the photo records and additionally upgrades the place.

The key regular feature of author’s creative process is a constant playful experiment, through which she enters into the field of contemporary authorial photography. The central starting point of her photographic note-taking is always a person; her frequent motifs are author’s self-portraits, permeated with her personal experience and close surroundings.