SHORT DESCRIPTION OF MASTER STUDY THESIS
After finishing my study of fine arts I suddenly felt a strong need to educate myself in photography. It is a media which offers infinite freedom of artistic expression and it was not satisfactorily conducted at the time of my undergraduate study. I wanted to know more! So I decided to extend my Bachelor's thesis topic about psychological portrait onto the visual communications field of photography. Looking from a totally art-theoretic point of view, I am interested in what tools and approaches this medium offers to achieve psychological effect. What exactly allows us - viewers of photographs - to decide: "This is a psychological portrait and this is not"? How does a photographic image's psyche differ from ones expressed with other art media? The World is constantly flooded with images of crisis areas, showing us consequences of war, terroristic attacks, natural disasters etc. How are these images absorbed into the consciousness of a modern viewer? Does he/she, with this unstoppable everyday mass media image bombardment, even have the time to stop for a brief moment and co-mourn with a suffering stranger in a photograph? Does emotional contemplation depend upon cultural appurtenance, education, age, gender, nearness of event?
PHOTOGRAPHY As well as studying the theory of photography, which includes interviews and conversations (like the one with Christopher Andersen who is one of the youngest Magnum and Seven Agency photographers) and field research, I’m also studying the practical point of the medium. Lately I attended a photo course conducted by one of our most famous documentary photographers - Arne Hodalič (working for National Geographic),I also practice underwater photography and have been taught by English marine journalist and videogerapher Jaime Burns and I have written articles about endangered marine-life species. But my main photographic work is to portray people's psyche, and is socially engaged. Represented photos show Haitian refugees in Dominican Republic and Turkish, stuck between tradition and western mentality. My next two photo projects are going to be about Iraqi war refugees and Post-war Balkans.
NeDelo, 23rd of April2006, photo: Reuters
After finishing my study and preparing Bachelor, I spent most of my time in Arab world (Jordan and Egypt); a world that nowadays evokes second thoughts to almost every western traveller. I was there, in an oasis of peace (at least I felt so), although across the boarder some miles away a terible war was being fought! And notes about terroristic attacks were keep coming. Now Im realising with fear in my heart that, even this soul asylum is turning with unlimited speed into a paranoid western-kind of chaotism, which demands constant looking over one's shoulder. In February 2004 were my, in all good believing, from war zones remote, European eyes reached by painfull images of torturing Arab prisoners in Abu Graip, probably much before they reached our home-Slovenian and other European public. I might have seen more than others but at the time I couldn't read Arabic, so I asked my Kurdish friend to translate for me the text. But he had no words only a tear, running down his cheak. After that Arafat died and all the Arab world mourned. Watching his funeral procession I was surprised by his country men hungrily grabbing his cloth (head dress) and tearing it up so anyone could get a part of it,… forever . But there was not only the famous cloth (his trade mark) that was to be torn up, but also a PICTURE of him! At this point photography almost reached or even regained the power of a holy icon. Unintentionally it reminded me of my father's post-mortem photographs. I am still afraid to take a look at them... This is exactly why I am interested in… the psychological power of the photographic image.
After finishing my study of fine arts I suddenly felt a strong need to educate myself in photography. It is a media which offers infinite freedom of artistic expression and it was not satisfactorily conducted at the time of my undergraduate study. I wanted to know more! So I decided to extend my Bachelor's thesis topic about psychological portrait onto the visual communications field of photography. Looking from a totally art-theoretic point of view, I am interested in what tools and approaches this medium offers to achieve psychological effect. What exactly allows us - viewers of photographs - to decide: "This is a psychological portrait and this is not"? How does a photographic image's psyche differ from ones expressed with other art media? The World is constantly flooded with images of crisis areas, showing us consequences of war, terroristic attacks, natural disasters etc. How are these images absorbed into the consciousness of a modern viewer? Does he/she, with this unstoppable everyday mass media image bombardment, even have the time to stop for a brief moment and co-mourn with a suffering stranger in a photograph? Does emotional contemplation depend upon cultural appurtenance, education, age, gender, nearness of event?
PHOTOGRAPHY As well as studying the theory of photography, which includes interviews and conversations (like the one with Christopher Andersen who is one of the youngest Magnum and Seven Agency photographers) and field research, I’m also studying the practical point of the medium. Lately I attended a photo course conducted by one of our most famous documentary photographers - Arne Hodalič (working for National Geographic),I also practice underwater photography and have been taught by English marine journalist and videogerapher Jaime Burns and I have written articles about endangered marine-life species. But my main photographic work is to portray people's psyche, and is socially engaged. Represented photos show Haitian refugees in Dominican Republic and Turkish, stuck between tradition and western mentality. My next two photo projects are going to be about Iraqi war refugees and Post-war Balkans.
NeDelo, 23rd of April2006, photo: Reuters
After finishing my study and preparing Bachelor, I spent most of my time in Arab world (Jordan and Egypt); a world that nowadays evokes second thoughts to almost every western traveller. I was there, in an oasis of peace (at least I felt so), although across the boarder some miles away a terible war was being fought! And notes about terroristic attacks were keep coming. Now Im realising with fear in my heart that, even this soul asylum is turning with unlimited speed into a paranoid western-kind of chaotism, which demands constant looking over one's shoulder. In February 2004 were my, in all good believing, from war zones remote, European eyes reached by painfull images of torturing Arab prisoners in Abu Graip, probably much before they reached our home-Slovenian and other European public. I might have seen more than others but at the time I couldn't read Arabic, so I asked my Kurdish friend to translate for me the text. But he had no words only a tear, running down his cheak. After that Arafat died and all the Arab world mourned. Watching his funeral procession I was surprised by his country men hungrily grabbing his cloth (head dress) and tearing it up so anyone could get a part of it,… forever . But there was not only the famous cloth (his trade mark) that was to be torn up, but also a PICTURE of him! At this point photography almost reached or even regained the power of a holy icon. Unintentionally it reminded me of my father's post-mortem photographs. I am still afraid to take a look at them... This is exactly why I am interested in… the psychological power of the photographic image.
My OWN photowork is abut dfferent areas of photography:
-socially engaged photography-portraits
-travel photography
-underwater
-textures...which I apply later on on my 3D models
