Dušan Letnar
MY NEIGHBORS
Exhibition opening on Friday, November 28, 2025 at 7:00 PM in the Kamnik Photo Club Gallery
Photographer Dušan Letnar is with the series My neighbors, which he has been creating since 2014, has captured a quiet and persistent chronicle of life on a neighboring farm in Mekinje. Through his lens, he follows the Jeran family, paying special attention to the three boys who grow up among the fields, the barn, and the old mill house. His black-and-white photographs reveal a life that modern society perceives as outmoded and almost marginal – children living in modest circumstances take on the responsibility of farm chores, yet experience an authentic childhood.
Letnar's approach is respectful and patient. Over more than ten years of photography, he has built a relationship that allows him to enter the most intimate moments of a family. His method is nevertheless documentary; the images are not staged or planned – they are fragments of genuine everyday life, children's play in the yard, farm work or intimate moments within the old walls of the homestead.
The graininess of the film and soft contrasts create a sense of proximity, but Letnar maintains a distance throughout. It is a silent testimony to a life that persists outside the digital, urban world. The photographs reveal a life rooted in physical labor and generational tradition, far from the values that shape modernity. My neighbors they are not just a portrait of a family, but a mirror of class and cultural differences that modern society often ignores.
Rea Zupin
