Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / The Maribor Circle
Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / The Maribor Circle
The Maribor Circle was a platform for Avant-Garde photography created by 15 members of the Maribor Photo Club. With the aim of creating and communicating the core values of good photography Antonio Baričević, Ivo Čarle, Ivan Dvoršak, Martin Germ, Janko Jelnikar, Zmago Jeraj, Branimir Jerneić, Stojan Kerbler, Peter Lešnik, Dragiša Modrinjak, Zora Plešnar, Marjan Stojko, Simon Tihec, Vinko Vedlin and Franjo Vršič took an important step forward in their efforts to produce quality work equal value to the contemporary photography being made abroad. In order to create the impression of joint authorship they worked on a unified concept, used similar formal approaches and decided not to sign the photographs shown in their early exhibitions. By selecting everyday scenes and revealing their banality, the artists rejected the notion that the motif should be attractive or interesting to warrant capturing on film. The expressive, dramatic quality of the black-and-white format was enhanced with a plenitude of blacks and greys, hence the term “black photography”. The authenticity of the shots, which did not allow for any subsequent cropping or manipulation in the darkroom, was ensured by their characteristic black borders. In order to emphasise the crucial importance of comprehensively applied art fundamentals, the artists decided to select a low-quality photo paper. They were chosen to represent Yugoslavia at the 1974 Venice Biennial— the group’s greatest recognition—but unfortunately, the Biennial was not held that year. The Maribor Circle effectively ended the tradition of Yugoslav post-war photography. The group’s greatest legacy was the introduction of a number of radical changes, which secured an equal place for the previously marginalised photography among the other fine art media.
