Stanko Brečko, Adolf Falk, Stojan Kerbler, Franc Ferjan, Peter Kocjančič, Karlo Kocjančič, Jože Kološa – Kološ, Ante Kornič, Fran Krašovec, Gojmir Anton Kos, Mario Magajna, Janez Marenčič, unknown author, Janko Ravnik, Janko Skerlep, Slavko Smolej, Lojze Spacal, Franc Štiglic, Ivan Vidmayer
Can we still look at photographs of nature without feeling uneasy? Can we look at the Alpine landscape as something aspirational, identity-giving, and not instantly think of what is at stake, especially as we slowly witness these very landscapes degrade through climate change and extreme weather events? When we first dove into the photographic collection of Moderna galerija, the images before us seemed familiar: pastoral landscapes, mountain valleys, pristine lakes, and endless forests. It felt like flipping through an old “I Feel Slovenia” campaign brochure − those iconic visuals that come to mind when the country is mentioned in casual conversation. Although we did not set out to isolate any particular time period, many of the photographs that showed some form of landscape were from around 1935. Together, they seemed to constitute an image of prosperity and hope − they conveyed a certain idealism, even if rural life might have been rough and simple in the towns and villages under those grandiose peaks. In the presented photographs, brave mountaineers gaze down into the valleys, children and animals are playing, flowers are always in bloom, there is schnapps on the table, and a church is no more than an hour’s walk away.
Today, many of these motifs reappear in a different context, as part of Slovenia’s national brand as a “green, boutique destination.” Over the past few decades, the mountains – along with mountain sports – have become closely tied to the Slovenian national identity. Still, when viewed outside the tourism context, these contemporary mountains landscapes can evoke something darker than just hope and prosperity.
Indeed, today’s images of natural landscapes carry significant political weight. In climate discourse, they not only serve as poignant reminders of what we stand to lose, but can easily be appropriated as greenwashing, and are commonly featured in nativist and nationalist agendas. Recently, following the wider “reject modernity, embrace tradition” trend, social media, especially TikTok, have seen a surge in content celebrating nature, often in the form of compilations with titles such as European Classic, or even Aryan Classic. These are iconographically similar to the photographs we encountered in the collection, but with a disturbing twist, as they are presented in support of explicitly racist and nationalist rhetoric. One local example claimed that Slovenes are essentially 70% German and 30% Balkan, in an attempt to highlight the author’s supposed Aryan heritage. While some contemporary uses of nature aim to nostalgically promise a return to an untouched wilderness, these short videos present nature as something to be “defended” − not necessarily from climate change, but from the cultural Other.
In both cases nature is glorified, framed as an object of either reverence or conservation. But then there are the images where the landscape has already undergone its apocalypse − after extreme weather events like floods, droughts, or wildfires. When working on Fault Line, we often asked ourselves: Can the contemporary landscape only be celebrated or seen as doomed?
In the project Fault Line, which we present at the exhibition Space with a Potentiality for a Shift the fragments of nature we focus on tend to avoid offering an “overview,” nor do they wish to prompt instant judgment about how “badly” the landscape has been damaged. From the very beginning, we decided to portray the scars left by the climate crisis from a close-up perspective. The iron-stained water of the Rio Tinto, the unripe tomatoes in a Spanish greenhouse, soot-covered palm trees, or the rotting apple fields in Emilia Romagna − these are the traces of human life lived in the landscape. Working on a photographic project aimed at documenting societal responses to the climate crisis, including the responses from the far-right, one inevitably ends up circling around the images of beautiful landscapes. It is always lingering at the back of your mind, always implicit: behind a burned-out kitchen on the Greek-Turkish border, there are the vast, green forests of the Dadia National Park that were lost to the fires.
Looking back at the images of mountains in the Moderna galerija collection, taken almost a century ago, the way they presented an idealized version of Slovenia’s natural world as timeless and hopeful, invites us to ponder on the meaning and implications of landscape photography today. In a way, these mountains are still grand, static, larger than us, and seemingly more resilient (certainly much more so than our societies). But their serenity is now intertwined with something else, as the landscape becomes an increasingly contested site − exploited by nationalism (as a symbol of the supposed mythical connection between a land and its people), and finally, devastated by climate change and extreme weather events.
When we gaze at the mountains today, how can we reconcile our emotional attachment to them and everything that they symbolize, in the context of this contested image?
