BORUT PETERLIN in a rabbit hole of photography

Robert Prebil is an renown actor, but for last few years he dived into sculpture making. Next week he has an opening of an exhibition of his sculptures. The assignment from Mladina forStripitz rubric came in the time when I’m totally flooded by work and I contact him on Thursday to find out that only that day he has a day off and a lot of time to make the portrait. So I said why not and went to Ljubljana without any preconception how to make a portrait. I leaned to my notorious banzai tactic that basically means I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’ll do it in the best way possible!

Robert wanted to have his sculpture in the front plane so that him as an actor will be in a second plane. He wanted to distinguish his role as an actor from his sculpture making. I said that’s good enough for me, let’s build a story around that! We took a walk around the near area, looking for a proper place to set his sculpture and I was astonished by graveyard of writers and poets Navje in Ljubljana! We have chosen Plečnik’s archers. We had a great discussion about art, how him as an actor is a medium for a director and writer of theater act, whereas in sculpture making he is a casting his vision to material medium.

So we were watching his sculpture under Plečnik’s architecture and he stated quite loudly: “THIS! This is what Plečnik left out from his architecture! This feminine principle!” I agreed completely. We admired the view on the sculpture and think how we should embed the author in this perfect scenery… We tried many options and on the end I decided to place Robert far in the back and with lightning establish the relation between each other. We worked for an hour and a half. I know I can make a good picture if I only have enough time and patience from the person portrayed.

Cover page of www.mladina.si.
Authors:
Creative director: Robert Botteri
Graphic design and montage: Ivian Kan Mujezinović
Photography of faces: Borut Peterlin

Today I’ve shot this image of Ministers Katarina Kresal, Igor Lukšič and Patrik Vlačič in a good mood at the reception for foreign diplomats, hosted by Prime Minister Pahor and President Turk with their wifes at the Castle Brdo pri Kranju. It has been chosen as photo of the week @ Mladina.

I just returned from the lecture of R. Riedler, an Austrian photographer. I know his work since he had great exhibition in Novo mesto, gallery APT. He is really great photographer and I encourage you to visit www.photography.at – his site, but lecture was really bad! He spoke for more then an hour about cliches of cliches and after an hour of superficial talk for secondary school, I left back to Mladina’s editorial. Leave a comment if the talk about his work was good.

Today I was covering visit of Macedonian and Slovenian Prime Ministers in Chamber of commerce (GZS) and I made a new image from Flower Power series, where I’m documenting flower bouquets in press conferences. I made also this scary portrait of Prime Minister Pahor. It looks like the power of governing did took already a tool.

This is a portrait of Lucija Stepančič, a writer that will be published in Mladina and will go along with a recension of her book. I know the portrait it’s very different from my Stripitz creative portraits, but I’m posting it, just to say it’s very different when you have time to prepare for a portrait and when you meet on the street for a few minutes and do a portrait immediately and run for next photo-term. And in spite that this portrait would not classify under a notorious HCB’s decisive moment, I know it’s just that!

Here is a new portrait from my Striptiz series. Živa Ploj Peršuh is a conductor, graduated in Mannheim. I wanted to do make her portrait half a year ago. As a man I wanted to emphasize her role of a leader, so I suggested that I would organize a squad of soldiers doing push-ups and she would conduct them. She was not going along with my fascination of hierarchy and she wanted something more subtle. So I said I’ll call her back when I’ll have more subtle idea. It’s really difficult for me to discard an idea that I fancy and think again for a new idea. In this case it took me half a year to think of a new idea. I assure you I didn’t forgot, but I did postpone it until I’ll have a god idea.

As so many times, also this idea appeared out of now-where, after training in the forest. I was running in the snow leaving footprints and I thought on Striptiz portrait of Živa and answer was obvious. Footprints as music notes. I wanted to do it on Monday, but I didn’t had time and on Tuesday all snow was gone. Today we drove to Krvavec mountain where there is still few meters of snow. We didn’t drove on the top, but stopped on the first appropriate patch of snow.

I used two flashlights and a tripod that was extended to maximum and then I was holding it in my hand and raise the camera to 4 meters. I trigger the shutter with self-timer. I know It’s primitive, but it’s easier then climbing trees in the snow.

Which one do you prefer? First one is like leaving creating music, second one is like listening music of the forest.
thx,
B5

PS: The music note was made in the last moment in ŽELVA carpentry, kindly organized by Jana from Mladina! THX A LOT!!!

Uroš Weinberger is an academic painter and also a motor of music group Moveknowledgment. He is having an exhibition opening on Tuesday 27th of January in Gallery Schwarz.

I had big plans for this portrait. I arranged everything to do it in hospital as a visual echo to the title of his exhibition Human Error, but when I checked the scene it was not as I imagined, so I changed my mind. It was raining so we decided to do it in his micro studio. After half an hour I saw this corner and nailed the mirror on the wall, so I could have his reflection.

For a STRIPTIZ rubric I did a portrait of Dušan Kastelic. He is an animator and author of Chicory ‘n’ Coffee, based on a song by Iztok Mlakar. You can see the trailer HERE.

I made a portrait with a reproduction of a painting of Ivana kobilica as he is offering a substitute for coffee. It’s difficult to explain everything if you don’t know the story of the film.

It was really difficult to make this picture, because this painting is a national treasure and everybody know it. It’S in private property, so it’S practically impossible to photograph it, so we found a small res file on Internet, so we interpolated and applied several filters, so it looks very persuasive. I borrowed a frame that costs 200 EUR from Studio Černe and print it in Fotoformat. We did the picture in Zagorje.

Few hours ago there was a photo-term of a meeting of Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor and CEO of Gazprom Alexei MIller. They are still a bit discrete what the conversation was about, but it’s logical it was about new pipeline for gas and probably about a possible gas terminal in Slovenian sea.

I did many photos. I’ve chosen side position from two reasons. First I hate straight flash4cash handshakes and second the position in front of them was already taken by about 30 photographers. So I knew that if I’ll get a picture it’ll be great, but my chances were slim. On top of everything because of cold temperatures, my flash battery was not as fast as usually. When they start to shake hands I took a picture just before hands touch and then several usual picture. I notice that my flash is filling slow, so I prolonged the shutter speed to 1/60 and I was “drinking” the flash light from other photographers. Many pictures were too dark, but three images were perfect. Of course when my flash filled up I had a usual flash4cash image.

I’m publishing the best image. Pahor and Miller are appearing like Vampires from Gorjanci hills.