Woman – Power in sensibility
Mordancage series
Woman – Power in sensibility
Technique: mordançage - experimental analogue photography
Exhibition space: Gallery MediaNox, 2022
Klavdija Žitnik (1982) has worked and created in Železniki and Kranj, and is currently based in Železniki. She has been working as a professional photographer for more than ten years and has honed her skills in both sports and corporate digital photography. In 2020, she returned to analogue techniques, to the very beginning of photography, to 1851, when Friedric Scott Archer invented the wet collodion technique on glass, which roughly coincides with Puhar's invention of photography on glass. She is an active member of the Janez Puhar Photographic Society in Kranj, where her innovation is encouraged through unusual approaches. The photographer herself says that she enjoys the magic of slow but rewarding techniques, which she builds on with experimental approaches.
If we refer to Yoko Ono's words "I believe that all women are witches, in the sense that a witch is a magical being", we can relate these words to the work of Klavdija Žitnik. Conceptually, the series of paintings was created in the spring of 2021 and is the result of an exploration of women's deepest emotions. The expression of inner strength is a privilege which manifests itself through years of closing behind spiritual walls dedicated to the defence of the most honest, the purest. With the right approach, we decide when these walls come down and what it is that we let close, and through this the incomprehensible power of sensitivity is expressed. It is this moment that is depicted in Klavdija Žitnik's photographic series. The technique used, just like the individual photograph itself, is personal and inimitable, allowing impurities and imperfections that lead to a complete picture. The tints are created over a special RC paper that allows for delicacy and controlled stepping over the frames.
What we perceive in Klavdija Žitnik's photography is the inimitability of magic, which directly contacts the viewer and touches them in a completely unique way.
Rebeka Tašič, curator
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Skills
Mordancage technique, darkroom