Zora Plešnar (1925–2021) was a photographer from Maribor who worked from the seventies of the last century until 2012, when her last rounded photographic cycles were created. The origin of her photographic work can be dated back to 1968, when she joined the photoclub Fotoklub Maribor, which offered her excellent professional and motivational support. Through Fotoklub Maribor, Zora Plešnar wove ties that led to the birth of an astonishing number of community exhibitions and other organizational systems in the world of photography. Perhaps the most significant of the latter is the place that Plešnar held as the only woman in the famous modernist group Mariborski krog (1971–1974). Thus, she collaborated with many prominent photographers of the 1970s and 1980s in Slovenia, such as Janko Jelnikar, Ivan Dvoršak and Zmago Jeraj, who, among other things, are responsible for co-shaping the status of the art of photography as we know it today. Even though the photographer mostly worked in an environment of extremely powerful creators, she managed to sovereignly create her own visual language. The bulk of Zora Plešnar's photographic opus is represented by variously extensive black and white cycles, some of which were created for ten years or more during many trips. Although at first glance the subject matter of the selections appears to be diverse, there is a continuous common thread between them - they touch on the elements of passing, transience, impermanence and temporality. Zora Plešnar was often left out of overviews of the history of Slovenian photography, most likely because of her gender, and she also experienced her first radical retrospective exhibition very late: in 2019 at the Maribor Art Gallery at the age of ninety-four.
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