Photographic Experience – Experience Of Heritage

Cultural heritage are components of culture deriving from its wider ethnological comprehension. It represents achievements of the past ages in material, social and spiritual areas of culture which are foundations of preserving the cultural identity of Slovene people. Cultural heritage is understood to be all human creativity which originated either along, past or from the effects of nature.

Photographic Experience represents an excellent opportunity to bring heritage closer to young people and consequently the awareness of it. Through photographs we can see how the young perceive their heritage, where they find its uses, and above all what are their attitudes towards it. Photographing our heritage also represents important documenting of heritage so we are all contributors to its preservation and awareness. By looking through the eyes of the young upon heritage we can instill the knowledge in our children that their work will someday become part of our heritage, therefore it is important we treat it with responsibility and respect. It is especially interesting to see the comprehension of material and non-material or live heritage and how to capture on film heritage such as knowledge, traditional crafts and skills, folk creativity and trades. Photographic Experience is also an excellent opportunity to get to know and understand other cultures and ways of life.

Slovene Photographic Experience is representing a peculiarity in our cultural heritage, a drying-frame »kozolec« with its particular architecture. Other countries poorly know this installation, which was used for drying field crops, especially grain in sheaves, clover, beans and hay. It is interesting that there are different shapes and types of drying-frames varying in regard to which region in Slovenia they are in. They are usually found on the edge of the fields and are very characteristic farm buildings of Slovenia. These drying-frames are tightly connected to life-styles of the farm people in the past. Our choice of making these »kozolec« structures a theme of this year's Photographic Experience is to draw attention to the uses, protection and care of this so fundamentally Slovene particularity in the future.

Alenka Lamovšek, ethnologist and cultural anthropologist