Born in Paris in 1963, KlavdijSluban is a French photographer of Slovenian descent. Sluban's work is rigorous and coherent, making him one of the most interesting photographer-auteurs of his generation. Often marked by literary references (Beckett, Milton), his photographic voyages exist on the margins of burning and immediate contemporary reality. The Black Sea, the Caribbean, the Balkans, Russia, China... all can be interpreted in his work as the intersection between the reality of the moment and the intimate feelings of this photographer and dromomaniac. The deep blacks and silhouettes against the light give his photographic signature a rigour and precision free from all didacticism or exoticism.
Since 1995, when not travelling, KlavdijSluban hosts photographic workshops with young prisoners. Starting in France, with the support of Henri Cartier Bresson, Marc Riboud and William Klein, this engagement continued in the penal colonies of the East, in the ex-Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Serbia) and the ex-Soviet Union (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldavia, Latvia, Russia), including the disciplinary enclosures of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and more recently Central America.
Familiar with places of detention and partner of those who inhabit them, Sluban uses his images to show the problems of these closed spaces and constrained horizons, making us feel the fractures of an enclosure that doubles the interiorization of perceptions.
He is the EPAP (European Publishers Award for Photography) 2009 laureate, for the book "Transsibériades", appearing simultaneously in five European countries in October from publishers ActesSud. He is also the recipient of the Leica (2004) and Niepce (2000) awards.
www.sluban.com
EXHIBITIONS (Selected)
2009 « Rencontresd'Arles », European Publishers Award for Photography 2009, projected at the Théâtre Antique
Beijing Art Fair, Photo Beijing 2009
2008 Museum of Texas Tech University, Texas, United States
Galleryof the Hotel de Sauroy, Paris, official selection of the « Mois de la Photo (Photo Month) »
Lyon Photography Biennial, exhibition of the sponsored work « Retour-Aller », Bleu de Ciel Gallery
2007 Aura Gallery, Shanghai, China (98 page catalogue)
Musée des Beaux-arts (Fine Art Museu), Caen, France
Fotografia Europea, Phtography Festival of Reggio Emilia, Chiostridi San Domenico, Italy, exhibiition of the sponsored work Berlin (cat.coll.372pp)
2006 National Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia (catalogue « Après l'obscurité (After Obscurity)» 78p.)
Canton Fine-Art Museum, China (retrospective/monograph)
National Museum, Cracow, Poland(22p. catalogue)
Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, Rennes, France, (Giant formats, outside, cat. « D'ailleurs », 58p.)
2005 Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland
National Museum of Estonia
Galerie Fait & Cause, Paris
Central American Photography Festival, San José, Costa-Rica (cat.28p.)
2004 Millennium Museum for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
People from the voyage at the foot of the slag heap, slide-show on a community rendered sedentary in Saint-Etienne
Transurbaines Festival
2003 Modern Art Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia (cat.106 pp.)
2002 Transverses, MaisonEuropéenne de la Photographie, Paris, a trip through ten years of photography. (cat. 188pp. published by MEP)
Jérusalem(s) presented in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories (Gaza...)
ParadiseLost, Galerie du Château d'Eau, Toulouse (cat. 28pp.)
2000 Fnac Photo Galleries, Paris, winner of the Niepce prize
Odessa Pushkin Museum, Ukraine (cat. 32pp.)
1998-2000 Autour de la mer Noire (Around the Black Sea) (texte by Olivier Rolin) is presented in the Black Sea area, with the support of the InstitutFrançais of the respective regions.
1998 K. Sluban and the Young prisoners of Fleury-Mérogis: les lieux d'un piège (the places of a trap). Maison Européenne de la Photographie
Month of the Photo, Paris (collective catalogue)
1997 Itinerant Exposition, Japan and Europe, published by Tokyo Today, éd. Idéodis, Paris, 1997
28th Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d'Arles, Palais de l'Archevêché (coll. cat.).
1995-1996 Balkans-Transit, presented in the Balkans with the support of the Centres et InstitutsCulturelsFrançaisof the respective countries.
1994 D'Est en Ouest (East in the West), Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris (catalogue éd. Filigranes, 24pp.)
COLLECTIONS
Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.
Centre d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Fnac Photo Galleries
Château d'EauGallery, Toulouse.
NSM Vie / ABN-AMRO, Paris.
Musée Réattu, Arles.
MetropolitanMuseum of Photography, Tokyo.
PhotographyMuseum, Braga, Portugal.
Modern Art Museum, Ljubljana, Slovénie.
PushkinMuseum, Odessa.
National Museum of Estonia.
PhotographyMuseum, Finland.
Canton Museum of Fine Art, China
Museum of Fine Art, China
Harvard University, Collection Edwin C.Cohen, Etats-Unis
Klavdij SLUBAN
