Franci Virant: Roman Holiday

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Franci Virant’s series of exquisite, spontaneous but at the same time well-considered photographs depicts a week's stay in the Italian metropolis. The holiday takes place in October 2008. In the photographs, the artist toys with the story of people, architecture, art, a story condensed into a recognizable genius loci of a mighty and ancient monument-city. He traces his impression of people's attitudes to things and reveals the core of his own experience of the place. At the same time, Virant captures the rapture of people who do not actually realize what they are looking at. The superficiality of mobile-phone photography raises the question: Does this prove that one has really been there? While some pictures take on new meanings, becoming completely updated, and others carry sophisticated, inscrutable symbolism, the common thread of exceptional emotional intensity runs through all of them.

Art critic Brane Kovič about Virant’s work: Virant's photographs may therefore also be read as a spontaneous, unpretentious, anthropological essay that encapsulates an aspect of today’s state of mind with a playful, occasionally humorous tone. The dominant line of Virant’s narrative emerges from the Italian capital’s extraordinary artistic richness, which is the most common reason for the vast crowds that flock to its streets and markets, thronging around architectural achievements, the many museums, art collections and archaeological remains, with occasional detours to more trivial segments of daily life faced by both the locals and visitors. … A reliable witness to the reality into which he is drawn, Franci Virant is aware of the privileged position from which he is able to interpret it, because in putting on view what was in front of his camera in a certain moment his standpoints and understanding of the world transcend the bounds of haphazardness and blend together to form a mosaic of creative freedom as self-cognition."

Franci Virant (b. 1958) has gained renown as a brilliant fashion photographer – photographing women is part of his daily routine. He broadened his experience in photography as member of the famous ŠOLT photo group, and later by working for the Delo daily's in-house photography department. Since 1988, he has worked as a freelance cultural professional. Contributing to projects by the IRWIN group, Virant has been involved in the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst) group since 1987. He works with Slovenian artists and fashion designers. Virant's photographs feature on numerous theatre posters, and in many publications. He has held several high-profile solo exhibitions, including a 1996 showcase in Cankarjev dom's Small Gallery (at a time when this exhibition space emerged as Ljubljana's/Slovenia's new photography gallery) and took part in various group exhibitions locally and internationally. Virant's photos have been used for a series of outstanding calendars, as well as marketing campaigns, and appeared in numerous Slovenian newspapers and magazines (including ARS VIVENDI, Stop, Pepita, Moda, Focus, etc.). He is recipient of several international photography awards (e.g. in Poland, Japan and Hungary).