interiores madrileños - Galerija Gregor Podnar.

primož bizjak
portfolio 2009

interiores madrileños 2007 - 2008

Esercizi di meditazione (Riccardo Caldura)
… The City thus assumes the appearance of a chrysalis that is about to leave its
cocoon, and the photographic image captures this delicate stage of metamorphosis between the ‘no longer
the previous stage’ and the 'not yet' of the condition to come. The image prepares to grasp the point of
transition between ruin and renewal, leaving to the things the time of their appearance, representing them at
an hour that will be difficult for us to easily place in the usual course of the day. In Bizjak’s photographs, dusk
seems to be confused with dawn, revealing the slow dream-like pulsation of the urban space. The length of
the exposure of the photosensitive plate can be extremely long because the photographer/entomologist
cannot predict when the chrysalis-city will unfold. He can only give free rein to the interaction, in a deserted
scene, between two actors: light and things. Photography thus becomes the only means capable of recording
an otherwise imperceptible happening. As in accurate focusing, the two stages of ruin and splendour become
one. The past of the buildings, the traces of the earlier seasons in the city, its members scattered, dissected,
and already partially recomposed, are illuminated by a light that - not by chance- recalls that of a Baroque
painting. …

carcel de carabanchel, madrid 2008

karavle case di frontiera 2004.2006

The frontier guardhouses: the border between Slovenia and Italy
It is the project about the ex-military border between Yugoslavia and Italy, established with Morgan’s
agreement in 1947.
Today, the area of ex-military border is abandoned. It is nobody’s land and has lost its original function. It is
forgotten, because Europe which created it does not exist any more. So the military border is left not only to
the nature but also to slowly and discreet new colonization of man and civil society.
The work of Primož Bizjak is one of the most attentive and sensitive works that was made on the area of exmilitary
border. Radical changes made in Europe are pointing out at specific architectures which hosted the
frontier force of Yugoslavian Army. The history is made of details and it reflects itself in frontier
guardhouses. It becomes micro-history, and the attentive photographer creates an extraordinary visual
narration about what is happening with the military border that runs through the Alps, from the Italian-
Austrian-Slovene triangle to the Adriatic coast, next to Trieste Gulf. This is a series of strictly defined
photographs which were made by someone who has learned the lessons of minimalist and analytical
contemporary photography, especially the one of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The series points out what has
happened and what is still happening today with frontier guardhouses.
The architectural module is always the same, as it was the part of the military system, and also the
photographic analysis which documents the approximately 70 frontier guardhouses that existed on the
border between Slovenia and Italy is always the same (the same viewpoint). On the other hand these same
buildings appear to us always different, especially because the present buildings show very different states
of preservation. Sometimes they are so devastated that all you can see are the remains of the walls. Bizjak
does not select the buildings depending on its state or beauty. His repertoire is made of all frontier
guardhouses, from first to the last, showing the actual situation of the “state border”: what remains when
the motive for its existence is no longer present.

sarajevo in krajina 2004 .- 2006

venezia 2003 - 2005

For a photographer, Venice can be a trap or a springboard. It's easy to fall into the postcard photography,
banality, into déjà vu. Therefore, Primož Bizjak has decided to discover and reveal to us, trough his night
photography, another face of Venice, the face we do not know. It is not the Venice with its reflections in the
water and neither Venice in the moonlight, but a city with its works in process, trash cans and channels in
maintenance phase. This interpretation does not arise from a desire to be extravagant, but from a wish to
exploit one of the characteristics which makes photography more penetrating in the dark than a human eye:
the capacity to sum up the light during long expositions, registering onto the photo-sensible emulsion the
forms and the colours which our sight does not percept or percepts in a different way. From here arises the joy
and surprise of re-seeing and re-evaluating a view of the city which we otherwise overlook or discard because
of its poor visual quality. In photographer’s work the system of vision, whose operating mode strongly
influences photographer’s mental relationship to his object, plays a decisive role. The site is chosen with calm,
the scene is studied and balanced without rush, the exposition is chosen and accomplished in most convenient
time, sometimes even when natural and artificial light meet together. The execution time is slow, well-thought,
and this is all reflected in a well-balanced photograph, in spite of disorder that it really represents. Colours are
the result of Bizjak’s race with the night light, which is hidden and not perceived by human eye, but revealed
on the film, which surprises us. This series of night photographs lacks the capacity of capturing the smell of
dirty and stagnating water and the sound of water pumps: the scene is shown as poetic and aesthetic,
transforming even s a trash can in a wonderful mess. And once more, we accept with pleasure the lies which
photography presents.
Guido Cecere

difesa di venezia 2009