Janez Bogataj: Early works 1978-79

The focus of the exhibition Early works by Janez Bogataj is the search of a young photographer. He, after being thought and inspired by Vlastja Simončič, first slovenian photographic pedagog, has stepped on a path of an independent visual artist being only 17 years old.
From entirely traditional genres, which introduced him to the world of photography, he gets sucked into new ways of expression trough the trends and movements he gets to know only trough current exhibitions. He is especially influenced by the works of Grupa Junij, which were exhibited extensively in the Gallery of Modern Art in Ljubljana in 1978.
The opus presented at the exhibition consists of vintage photographies.
They were shot and made in the years 1978 and 1979 under the influence of the aforementioned exhibition. In his explorations, the author paid attention not only to landscape from which he originated, but also to new topography (with the series made in Gorenja vas), self-portrait and conceptual photography.
The exhibition offers an interesting time jump, from a documentative perspective as well as with purely material characteristics of photographic medium of the time. It also offers an insight into current trends at the end of the 70s, as well as into the early teenage opus of Bogataj, who was only 19 years old when he started his serious photographic journey at the Mladina journal, soon after the exhibited works were made.
The youthful explorations, self-confidence and artistic approach all testify to the authorial approach that remains Bogataj’s main characteristic until today.