Photography is considered to be paramount reference medium that records time and stops images in front of the lens at the certain historical moment. Because of the testimonies of the existence of a certain phenomenon or being, I chose it as the main inspiration for the often problematic documentary gap in the history of women. I wanted to display that photos can fill such documentary gap, but we have to strive and seek them out. As a source of testimony, it has its limitations, as the photographer’s tendencies and the context in which the photograph was taken are always present. Documentarity is thus not necessarily objectivity, but the evaluation of a certain moment, chosen by the photographer and marked as worth photographing. The latter is important to be aware of at all during the Second World War, for which we can argue that the war, in which appearance was played important role.
I was mainly interested in the (partisan) war and the post-war experience of a woman captured in photographs, as this is a turning point when women stepped out of the sphere of privacy in the public. In this work, I mainly explore the background of photographs in the character of the fighters and in the character of (partisan) mothers. I was guided by the question of how revolutionary the revolutionary steps really were and how traditional in the new post-war disguises.
The photo library of the Museum of Modern History of Slovenia has proved to be a valuable location for selected photographs. With selected literature, I reinforced the historical background of the photographic images.
|
