FOTOPUBES

Abstract

In my thesis I want to explore the Slovenian contemporary photographic art focusing on the youngest artists who have recently graduated art schools and have started developing a new strain of fine art photography in Slovenian artistic space. Slovenia, not having a photography programme on any of it's art academies until recently, was always under influence of countries where Slovenian photography artists have studied, that being mainly Czech Republic and Serbia in the 90s and mainly UK, Germany, The Netherlands or France nowadays - the difference in the aesthetical and generally artistic expression is obvious. While most of the countries in Eastern Europe have seemingly lost the connection with the contemporary fine art scene, especially on the photographic field in the time of the post-digital art, Slovenia has kept it or rather gained it through the influence of its artists mainly studying abroad in the most developed western countries and not in Slovenia itself. On the other hand, the Slovenian photography scene has encountered an enormous problem as the artists studying abroad do not return to their motherland after finishing their studies - a trend that has gained on influence and popularity mainly in the last five years and is now almost becoming normality. The question therefore is if those artists can be counted as Slovenian or not at all, as example Aleksandra Vajd, who is one of the most influential Slovenian photography artists and at the same time one of the first ones who stayed in the country of her studies.

In my bachelor thesis I would like to create an outline of the most contemporary Slovenian photographic arts with a selection of the most influential or the main artists working in the Slovenian art space, comparing them to the Slovenian artists working in foreign art spaces in the same time and researching and deciding if both groups can be discussed in the discourse of the Slovenian art or are they foreign to each other.

In my work I plan to research artists, their works and their exhibitions, focusing on the aesthetical and conceptual aspects of their work, the differences and similarities between them and the comparison to their countries of studies and influences. I mainly plan to work with curatorial texts, exhibition catalogues and interviews with artists and my personal archive to research this topic.