Janez Bogataj

Janez Bogataj was born on 18 May 1961. His first photographs date back to the late 1970s, and a selection of them was first presented in 2016 by Galerija Fotografija gallery in Ljubljana under the title Zgodnja dela/Early Works. Between 1979 and 1988, he worked as a photojournalist for Mladina weekly magazine and, alongside his increasingly recognizable documentary photography, he also devoted himself to artistic photography. He received the Zlata ptica (Golden Bird) Award for his work in 1981. He has exhibited independently and as part of group, thematically-based exhibitions since 1980, first at home (in the former common cultural space of Yugoslavia) and then abroad, where he was particularly successful in France (the French National Library in Paris purchased 40 of his works in 1991). His numerous exhibitions include: XXII. republican photography exhibition (Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana 1980), 27th photography salon “20 October” (Salon fotografije, Belgrade, 1981), Bilderschau 82 – Fotofreunde Wertheim e.V. (Wertheim, 1982), 20 years of fotogrupa ŠOLT (Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, 1983), Razvojne poti slovenske fotografije (development paths of Slovenian photography) 1945–1983 (Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, 1984), Janez Bogataj, Fotografske metamorfoze krajine (photographic metamorphoses of the landscape) (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, 1992), Janez Bogataj, Pastorala (Photon Gallery, Ljubljana, 2006), N ́č se ne premakne (Nowt s’getting on), Pankrti – 30 years, as part of the Month of Photography project (National Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia, Ljubljana, 2007), Janez Bogataj, Sonata za sonce in meglo (Sonata for Sun and Fog) (Photography Gallery, Ljubljana, 2014), N ́č se ne premakne (Nowt s’getting on), Pankrti – 30 years (Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2017), Že dolgo nismo videli in slišali (National Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia, Ljubljana, 2017), Photo Basel/Virtual Edition (Basel, 2020), Osemdeseta (The eighties) (National Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia, 2022), Slovenski punk in fotografija (Slovenian Punk and Photography) (Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana 2023), Bagatelles (Galerija Fotografija Gallery, Ljubljana, 2024), Punk. Subculture. Socialism. Archives of the Future. Photography from Slovenia (Pforzheim, 2024), Iz oči v oči (Face fo face). 20 Years of the Galerija fotografija gallery, (Galerija fotografija gallery, Ljubljana, 2024), Punk. Subculture. Socialism. Archives and Photography from Slovenia (Murska Sobota Gallery, 2025).

Publications:

Bagatelles

Pastorala

Impressions

Zgodnja dela 1978-1979

Photographic metamorphoses of the landscape