Bird Keepers

A series of eighth black-and-white portrait photographs in an intensely moving way takes us through various experience and emotional states. Every photo works as the most intimate confession through the eye of the camera lens. However, this in no way reveals exclusive states of the portrayed person. We are under an impression they are just reflections of the photographer. The series “involves” the viewer in a kind of a double play: on the one hand, the images of individual portrayed persons together with inanimate nature give a feeling of certainty while they at the same time build on experience which arises from our basic everyday needs as well as on perception which is not just visual. On the other hand, the same portraits juxtaposed against each other open questions about our own perception. It seems that the author has managed to catch the perfect balance of photography media elements and has in a very unique way overcome the classic-style portrait photography. Mostly she achieved this by confronting the emotional states of portrayed persons against their “attributes” (birds) which reveal new symbolic meanings of photographic image. Bringing together the rational, ethical, aesthetical and sensual elements the author has overcome iconographic monoliths and passing trends which are constant companions in the field of art. Although on the formal level it seems that we have already seen these portraits somewhere along the historic line of portrait photography, we are still uncompromisingly confronted by the “punctum” of every photographic image and their moving sincerity and uniqueness of the black-and-white portrait series Bird Keepers.

Tevž Logar, Curator