This project, resulted from an acknowledged need of our town to provide, at least their touristic visitors with postcards is the base of this project.
While having within our members also quite passionate photographers as well as professional, quite renowned once, we started talks. The Javni Sklad za kulturne dejavnosti, Ljubljana funded us and the local Javni Zavod Spotur stept in as well, covering the costs of the production and taking therefore the responsibility to provide the distribution and sales through the local tourist-information with adjacent shop in Slovenj Gradec.
Photographers who stepped in were Primož Juvan, who did then, in 2019 finally his first solo show at our gallery. He has been working with us since many years, mainly taking care about photographic coverage. The other, illustrate person we could involve was Tomo Jeseničnik, who explained the ground rules of photography, the technical aspects and provided some tips and tricks out of his many decades comprising experiences.
The project itself was a three-phased project: (1) theory, (2) taking photographs, (3) selecting, DTP and print-order. Each phase was taken care of by appropriate mentors and the entire project became quite a funny, prosperous endeavor.
See here below three postcards, which are still available at the local tourist-information center representing certain specifics of our town. First one being Jakob Soklič (1893 – 1972), who has been long times the local priest with a passion of art history.
He educated his disciples in this regards and up to today his collection, put together of decades here in our region, can be visited in the regional historic museum (Koroški Pokrajinski Muzej).
The second one being a paper clipping of the 8 meters high monumental sculpture “S” at the northern city entrance, welcoming all people reaching this town since 1969. In the clipping represented on the postcard, cut out from the daily newspaper “Večer” in the 1969 it is described as a synonym of the town of Slovenj Gradec and raum AU, being also the administrator of the AU estate of Pino Poggi, this little accent seemed in place.
Third motive is in fact a composition of various photographs, all taken by participants during the workshop, representing a selection of doors, all to be found in the city center of Slovenj Gradec and the writing “Sanjamo, …” (We dream. …), which in a way takes anew the idea of dreams and their power to change any place. This message is for this town an important one and it is an invitation one can send from this little International Peace Messenger Town, it is in context with the mission, which this town has discovered years back, when engaged cultural practices were a normal attitude of this town.
Thanks for all parties involved, once more a marvelous additional value we could generate and contribute to our lovely hometown.