Group exhibition of members of the Photo Club Kamnik
With the exhibition FKK OFF! members of the Kamnik Photo Club traditionally end the calendar year. This time we teamed up with the renowned photographer Jošt Frank and created a theme called Home. Under his tutelage, the works that you have seen since December 15th you can see more in the gallery of the Kamnik Cultural Center. After the opening of the Dom series, the action moves to the premises of the Kamnik Photo Club, where the opening of the exhibition continues, which was organized at the same time by the remaining members of the club, who will present their works.
A few words about the home, prepared for the purpose of the exhibition by photo club member Rudi Kotnik:
News recently circulated online that the famous Annie Leibovitz plans to visit “Italy, India, the United States of America, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Japan in six months to document the real lives of people in their homes.” This is supposed to be a challenge for her given the information that "as many as 48 percent of people around the world do not feel that the media presents a realistic picture of their life at home." [1] We can say that photography also plays an important and special role in media images. So how does the media portray 'their life at home'? One of the important contributions to the creation of images in the media goes to John Berger. Knowing his analysis, we can't help but wonder what Annie Leibovitz could have done differently? Will she be aware of the pitfalls that John Berger pointed out and that the very association with Ikea sets? We just can't know that. However, regardless of the dual reservations we may have about her as a 'celebrity' as well as her association with Ikea, we can pay attention to one of the statements about her photo:
“The power of her work lies in its ability to reveal truths that appear authentic and explore deeper aspects of the universal human experience.” Furthermore, in her words: “I've been photographing people in their homes since the very beginning. This is a way of understanding who a person is."[2] In her words, attention is drawn, on the one hand, to the possibility of the universality of human experience and, on the other hand, to the relationship between a person's home and their personal identity. In this relationship, which interests Annie Leibovitz, we are particularly interested in how home can be understood at all.
Of course, the path leads us away from the usual taken-for-grantedness that home is a house, an apartment where I live (preferably with Ikea furniture...), a farm and the like. This includes student dormitories, student dormitories and so on - to senior citizens' homes (where some do not want to or do not feel at home) and singles' homes, where the priority is to be alone - even if they are not alone. This home as a place can also be a street, a space under a bridge, an overpass, etc. And the people who stay there usually have the name bez-dom-ci. So they have a home and they don't have one. We used to have correctional homes, educational homes and the like, which leads us to prisons as places of residence. Yes, the places where people live are so different. Even the word homestead has something of this in it. This is how we arrive at the verb home, where something is said to be happening, to be home, but it is not just something, but in the first person it is me and my creature or even me with my creature who is home. The term being is here exclusively as a verb, which I use to emphasize and express how I am, even when I ask another: how are you, or when I ask myself how I am. In other words, in a way to return home, to the notion of home: how do I feel, do I feel at home? This brings us to the way of living. One of these is sensitivity. This term (Befindlichkeit) was introduced by Martin Heidegger[1] and has several nuances: how I feel in a broader sense or also how I 'find myself'. More specifically: do I feel at home here or there, do I find myself, do I find myself at home. This is how the word home is also revealed to us in the sense that it is not only a place where I live, but a place where I feel at home. And I wonder if I feel at home because of the place (perhaps the Ikea furniture - what Ikea suggests to us) or something else. What could it all be? Home in a broader sense includes the concept of homeland. The significance (or even importance) of this becomes apparent only in contrast to the other pole, foreign countries. This is what is foreign to me, where I feel homesick. And when I listen to Antonin Dvořák's music, more specifically, the one he wrote or composed in the USA, or even more specifically the second movement of the ninth symphony (called From the New World), I can literally feel homesick just as I would experience it myself. I feel something similar to what Dvorak felt, and he literally set this feeling to music so masterfully that I can feel it myself when I listen to it. At the same time, I involuntarily ask myself whether a photograph can also express this. Definitely. If we allow ourselves to be touched by the images created in the many photographic projects of Jošt Frank[1] during his visits to refugee camps, then we can perceive both the sensitivity of the homeless and the fellow sensitivity of the photographer.
Let me also mention, literally or metaphorically, those meanings that are in some way close or distant: native can have many meanings, that something is native to me or foreign, that plants are native or non-native, that plants have their roots at home or somewhere abroad, that is to say that the plant also 'feels' at home somewhere, but not elsewhere. And last but not least, a very common term for different types of food is that it is 'homemade'. How many times do we hear: is this food (eg cookies, butter, sausages, etc.) homemade? And the saleswoman will of course say that of course it is. And then traders offer 'homemade' products to customers as a marketing trick - and we are so inundated with these tricks, especially visual ones, that we almost feel at home in them.
The term sensitivity sooner or later leads me to ask myself: do I not feel at home where there are people, around people, with them. So isn't home where the people are, where the other is? Of course, I would say, because home is not without people. This is how I get the idea of people who are close to each other and who experience something special in that proximity. When I leave "home", from my loved ones, after a certain time I start to miss something. And when I return to those loved ones that I may miss, it is the reunion that can mean I have come home. But what, when leaving "home" can also be flight, withdrawal, and correspondingly returning "home" can be accompanied by discomfort or even fear. So the pleasant feeling can be shattered and I think about relationships that can be unpleasant, alienating, cold, conflictual or even hostile. I think of addiction to alcohol, drugs,... suicide, etc. Thus, a home "where there are people" can also become a place of loneliness, a place of real tragedies or a place where hell is: "Hell is the people around you". The term home and its derivatives can have a wider meaning. When Ernst Bloch talks about thinking as something human, with which man became human, he says: "... and thinking is also a means to feel at home (zu Hause) in the world, to come home in a broader sense, to find yourself in those thickets of incomprehensible impressions”.
If, according to Bloch, a person feels at home with the help of thinking, can he also feel at home with the help of a medium such as photography as a human invention of creating images, that is to say photographic? And if we go back to the beginning, that is, to the conclusion that people do not have a sense of the real picture of their life at home in the media, then the dilemmas mentioned above have removed at least some aspects of understanding home and thus the challenge of how to tackle them in photography, so that you could feel at home in it.
Sources:
https://bwww.rtvslo.si/kultura/vizualna-umetnost/ikeina-rezidencna-umetnica-annie-leibovitz-isce-mlade-vajence/670628
https://lifeathome.ikea.com/blog/annie-leibovitz-life-at-home/
Heidegger, M. (1967). Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, p. 134: §29
https://jostfranko.com /
Sartre, JP. (1972) Flies, Closed Doors. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, p. 98.
Bloch. E. (1985) Antike Philosophie, Leipziger Vorlesungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Band 1. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, p. 14.
