The Photography of Janez Vlachy

photographer Janez Vlachy
written by Aleksander Bassin

 

The photography of Janez Vlachy, which has figured, especially, on the international scene for more than a decade (in 1988 he received his first international diploma in Luxemburg), speaks of a special time: of a time, which has, so to speak, already slipped away, slithered before our very eyes because of the message, which evokes an almost cult-like wonder, which seems as if it should be accepted in the name of a globalizing monism, and to which the “industrially” generalized trend of photography has brought it, the kind that strives to persuade us with its coldly staged and designed monumentality. Photography at that moment indeed lost its magical attraction and moment of adventure, which preoccupied Roland Barthes; does photography really float  between the coasts of perception, coasts of signs and coasts of images, but which does not reach any of these coasts, as Sartre once said of photographs which did not succeed in moving him.