The chaotic period in which we are currently living has brought with it numerous new styles in all fields of art production, including photography. The manifest contents have moved into the background, while conceptual issues, communication, relationships and ecological themes have moved to the forefront as the subject of expression. Bojan Golčar, who has been drawn to photography since his early childhood, entered the photographic scene through theatre photography at the end of the 1980s. A few years later he created the series of photographs Interspaces of Bodies. When he decided to re-enter serious photography, he started focusing on creating stories. Existential. With an aim. Ecological. A series of two hundred and two black and white photographs titled Sediments and Traces was not presented merely in solo exhibitions, but also in a vast monograph published under the same title by the Maribor publishing house Litera in 2017. The series presents a sublime story of Maribor, a town of contrasts, abandonment and lost illusions, a romantic atmosphere and youthful daydreams, unusual projects and promising illusions. In the same year he created the series of photographs Beyond the Silence, in which he combined his passion for photography and music and addressed the fates of the dilapidated spaces and the visions for their use. In the series of photographs Consequences he remained true to his style of photography, which is not to describe the given motif but rather present a visual narrative with an electrified and important message. His photographs are impressive, aesthetic, invitingly dramatic. The breeze of interventions across the dream of the artist’s basic narration provides the standard that we have become accustomed to from Golčar, only that this time the intervention performed in order to reach the final photographic product is more distinct. This is not a weakness, as the artist is the highest possible aesthete when creating the final image of every photograph that finds its place within a certain series, which always shocks the viewer when confronted by the depth of his narrative. His whose works do not merely address the contents, but also the medium of photography itself and merge the two into a harmonised artistic expression. His creativity rigorously follows the doctrine that photography gives us a different insight into our surroundings.
Life on earth is the most magnificent and most complex phenomena known to us. Environment and life are inseparably intertwined. However, our planet is currently in great danger. We are destroying forests around the world, the deserts are getting larger, river and seas are polluted. The air we breathe is also becoming worse. The ever-warmer atmosphere is causing the deserts to spread and the glaciers to melt, both of which influence the weather conditions around the world. Nature is trying to warn us about the changes with the ever more frequent extreme weather phenomena, changes that could present a great danger to our future life on this planet. Environmentalists dream of the Eden we are losing, however this Eden will remain merely a dream unless we, as individuals, start doing everything in our strength to prevent further pollution. Bojan Golčar is trying to do this through his photographs. His photographs have a magic invisible connection between the sky and land, a mysterious path along which certain humans walk. A selected few, certainly not everybody. Those who see, those who have understood the essence and strive towards a solution, because they are aware that the weather changes will demand numerous victims. People living on islands are going to face rising sea levels and hurricanes, people on the continent will face floods and landslides, Alpine ecosystems will be destroyed, drought is already becoming an increasing threat. As a consequence of the changing weather conditions numerous animal species will become extinct. Vast reserves of drinking water will disappear as a result of the melting glaciers. The careless attitude towards the environment in contemporary society is terrifying, as it reveals the individual’s immature attitude towards a healthy planet. The new series of Golčar’s photographs sets to open the eyes of the people as regards the consequences of this short-sighted attitude, in the hope that it is not too late to save our planet. The future is a mystery, we cannot define it or ascertain what it will be like, but there are certain theories that might or might not come true. Golčar presents his vision through his futuristic photographs which do not depict the causes, but the consequences of climate change and urban air pollution with rubbish and carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. However, only time will tell what the true consequences will be.
People are aware of our transience; thus, it is not surprising, that we try to find various answers as to the meaning of our existence and the dangers that threaten us. Being aware of our transience makes us contemplate the meaning of life, gives birth to philosophy, theology, beliefs, encourages advances in science, improves our habits, however the fear of death, dying and everything that smells of death has no place in modern society. We do not wish to discuss this, but our attitude towards death also influences our attitude towards life, marks the relationships between people, our attitude towards nature and other living creatures and dictates our priorities. The anxieties that are stirred within the individual by the insecurity as regards the issue of life after death and the meaning of life, are connected to the anxiety that society causes by expecting this same individual to always remain happy and not to burden other people with his woes. By enticing us to ever new shopping sprees and travels to new destinations for new experiences, adverts currently take care of this. Goods are piling up, and in combination with marketing products and services this is taking its toll. The problem of pollution and climate changes is undoubtedly a consequence of our actions, for we, with the way we live our lives, and especially by encouraging the hyper-production of goods, influence nature, change it, exploit it and pollute it, which is brought to attention by Bojan Golčar and his photographs of deserted landscapes and lost people within these landscapes. There is no money in this world and no scientific advances that will bring back the healthy environment for our grandchildren, the sort of habitat Earth is still providing for us today for free. It is ironic that now, when our progress has led us so far that everybody on the planet could have enough food for the first time in history and when machines could be working instead of us, and we could finally enjoy Eden, this never to be Eden is dying in front of our eyes and it is all because of us, our stupidity, vanity and greed.
In the world of moving pictures, human fear of destruction and consequentially of the end of the world, which the viewer faces in Golčar’s photographs, reaches far back. The first film with this dark theme was the French End of the World (La Fin Du Monde, 1931) directed by Abel Gance, who was aware of how strangely masses are drawn by the closeness of terror and fear of a devastating event. Special effects that make such films believable saw great progress during the 1990s. This could also be noticed in the increase in the number of films addressing this theme. Natural disasters, global warming and terrorists roused the world of film. The end of the world as a result of irreparable climatic consequences of global warming and pollution was foreseen in the film The Day After Tomorrow (2004), directed by Roland Emmerich. An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Al Gore’s documentary film on the theme of global warming received a lot of attention around the world. What happens a day later is depicted in the film The Road (2009), which is based on the book by the Nobel Prize winner Cormac McCarthy. While viewing these films the viewers are taken into the world of imagination, raising the fear of the unexpected danger in some, while giving others the feeling that they are living in an idyllic world where something like this could never happen. Even though the average individual does not think about death or the end of the world on a daily basis, when confronted by the death of someone close to him, he feels unease, experiences intense emotions or develops fear. However, one does not experience the same sort of fear when considering the consequences of the irresponsible treatment of the planet one inhabits, a planet threated by extinction, which is what Bojan Golčar is trying to draw our attention to with his photographs. These problems are making us increasingly aware of the situation and we need to understand that they should be solved and we should not wait for the consequences of our pollution to develop to the extent where the generations that will follow us will drown or even disappear. However, most individuals consider this problem to be distant, imaginary, (still) impersonal, and this can be clearly seen in Golčar’s deserted landscapes and the small, static human figures. An average individual navigates through life unburdened by the issues of his existence, his essence and mission, until the circumstances force him to think about these issues. This holds all the more true for the realisation as regards the vulnerability of our planet and the consequences the irresponsible human behaviour left behind. In photography the intent and consideration what to photograph and why are becoming increasingly important, and the photographer should also know how to tell his story and who will be interested. Golčar’s series of photographs Consequences is based on motifs from nature, mainly landscapes, recorded in the Dutch Frisian Islands. The beauty of nature overwhelmed the artist to the extent that he found it easy to create a series of stunning photographs, which represented the starting point for his visual narrative on the changes humans are causing in nature. The final selected and retouched images depicting an alienated landscape do not depict the actual consequences of the damage we are causing to our planet, as the artist did not intend to document the pollution, weather phenomena and natural disasters that are linked to climatic changes.
Neither of Golčar’s previous two series of photographs contained people, but this series does. Maybe many of his photographs of landscapes, in which green, white and brightly illuminated blue colours appear here and there, would be totally normal, but when we observe them in the context with the lost and lonely miniature images of people, the aesthetically pleasing images are seen differently. In some photographs people are present in what appears to be a state of relaxation, as if they are not aware, do not see, are not burdened by the consequences that are already here and that are already influencing us. In other photographs the image of the apocalyptic landscape in a grim and all-encompassing silence tremors without an echo between the miniature images of people and their invisible footprints. Elsewhere, the brightness of the sea is sparklingly dull, throwing long velvety shadows while the cloudy, grey and threatening sky seems to have come from another planet. People are coming close to the sea where they are trying to catch the waves that they have not heard in the past. In the foreground of the blue photograph, that shows no true distinction between the colours of the strip of land, sea and sky, we can see lost groups of people. If they are going to suck the fear into their bodies they will despair, go insane. The water foams, angry at the world, angry at the dirt it carries within its tired bosoms, in its desolate depths. Angry at the wave that comes and runs away immediately, covers the traces, turns around and seeks a new path. The wave that is no longer there. A multitude of scenes depict the slowly pulsating images, which offer a belief in the future. Total calmness, quiescence, not absence but a dizzy presence. Similar to the Maribor series Sediments and Traces, which is full of opposites and depictions of abandonment, Golčar also focuses on details in this photographic story. Solitary lights, fences, piers, which disappear hopelessly into the distance, the soulless patterns of the jagged soil, the cracks. Timelessness. Yearning. People who are eavesdropping on the sound of steps. In the midst of a dried-out seabed they are waiting for the surface to move and for them to, in the gleam of the gentle sun rays, see everything they have dreamed about for so long. They are stroked by the winds, they are moved, smiles are drawn to their faces and their eyes are clear, full of the sky, for it cannot be any other way. As time passes, they notice they are still there, and that nothing will change, unless they do something to help. The chosen images do not leave the viewer indifferent. The perspective and tonal attraction, the compositional perfection, the technical virtuosity and substantial computer skills can be pure formalisms, if the photographs fail to reveal the artist’s ideas, his personal view on the consequences of the various types of pollution our planet is facing. And Golčar certainly succeeds in passing on his views. Already the series of nineteen photographs Beyond the Silence, which addressed the viewer with a touch of magic, as the images of the loudspeakers were added as an illusion, had a feeling of transience. Already in this series the artist experimented by adding images within images, pictures within pictures. The interiors of the dilapidated buildings in this series bring their own beauty, and the added images of the loudspeakers raise associations to music, which provides the atmosphere for a different understanding. By unveiling the past, the viewer finds himself within the image, while the photographer provides the possibility for these neglected, but charmingly mysterious buildings, to be renovated into wonderful objects at some stage in the future.
Outside of Slovenia they have realised that photography is an art form in which numerous approaches are possible already in the 1990s. Today, Slovene photographers show extremely diverse approaches to the final image in artistic or conceptual photography, which they achieve through different techniques. Golčar’s imaginary futuristic images of Earth, towards which we are impulsively rushing with our actions, are created with the use of digital tools. The artist has created all the photographs for this series, none of the photographs have been taken from the internet and the software manipulation was also all his own work. In certain composite images he merged two exposures, one over the other, while others were (due to their content) created merely through software manipulation. In the sense of the doctrine of shock the artist used scratches and blemishes, as well as changed the contours and colours in the final image. His interventions into his photographic images are as radical as human intervention into our environment. With the interventions he created a message, while preserving the appearance of a realistic image. He did not use filters or effects just for the sake of it, merely in the l’art pour l’art sense, but in order to change his photographs into ready-mades, with which he emphasised the dramatic atmosphere of the apocalyptic vision of the wounded world in the future. Bojan Golčar used all of these possibilities so that he could show as clearly as possible his own feelings linked to the threat which could become reality in the near future. His series of photographs Consequences is merely his vision, for nobody knows for sure and nobody dears to predict, what the world that is dying in front of our eyes will look like tomorrow. The only thing that is certain is that it will be different.
Tatjana Pregl Kobe
