Božidar Jakac and Photography

Božidar Jakac and Photography
Exhibition curator: Lara Štrumej, MA

This exhibition provides the first comprehensive overview of Božidar Jakac's photography ever. Renowned as a printmaker, the artist sought creative outlets in new media even as a student. Giving prominence to the newly discovered photographs of his from before World War II, the exhibition follows the chronology of the photographs the artist took at significant stages in his life: in Prague (1922-23), Novo mesto (around 1923), Paris (1925), Tunisia (1925), America (1929-1931), and while with the partisan forces (1943-1945). This covers the first two decades of Jakac's involvement with photography, when his creative development in the media was most intense and he also matured both as an artist and as a person. By including a number of his works in other media - drawings, prints, pastels, and an oil - which represent the same experiential reality as the photographs, the exhibition shows that photography actually represented a new source of insight for the artist.

Jakac's photographic poetic implies his painterly sensibility concerning light, his impeccable sense of composition, and his familiarity with the aesthetic of Japanese and Chinese art, but it is realized in a modern photographic idiom based on his awareness of the ontological features of the medium. In urban environments he captured moments of human presence, translating them into images in which the semantic and aesthetic components are in perfect balance, transcending the ephemerality of the moment; in portraits of his near and dear ones and in self-portraits, on the other hand, he also exploited the potential of photography to reveal the subjects' spiritual traits.

Thanks to his modern perception of the medium and of course his subject matter, be it the exotic reality of North Africa or the symbols of American progress and prosperity, skyscrapers, bridges, and factory chimneys, Jakac's photography is a far cry from the then prevalent conceptual and aesthetic paradigms in Slovenian photography. As Jakac never exhibited his photographs and his shots remained obscure, unseen in his archive, the discovery of his early photographs brought an astounding realization about his creative power in this medium; and in the process changing irrevocably our established view of the history of photography in Slovenia.

In addition to the few surviving photographs and the (approximately 180) prints made for this occasion (by Stojan Kerbler), the exhibition includes also several drawings, graphic prints, pastels and an oil. The exhibition and the catalogue are the result of the collaboration between Moderna galerija and Jakac's heirs, Maja Turnher Miklavc and Primož Pablo Miklavc Turnher, Muzej novejše zgodovine Slovenije (the National Museum of Contemporary History), Dolenjski muzej (Jakčev dom) (the Dolenjska Museum (Jakac House)), and Galerija Božidar Jakac (the Božidar Jakac Art Museum) in Kostanjevica, and of the work and research of Lara Štrumej, MA.

The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and by Krka, d.d., Novo mesto

Photo: Božidar Jakac, New York from the 17th Floor of Hotel Manger, May 1931. Owner of copyright Primož Pablo Miklavc Turnher.