Host exhibition: Božo Štajer - The World of Saltpans at the Portorož Auditorium

Here’s another opportunity for you to attend the wonderful photo exhibition documenting the active periods of the unrepeatable intertwining of work and life at the Piran Saltpans from the 1950s. 

 

The exhibition Božo Štajer - The World of Saltpans, created by the Museum of Recent and Contemporary History of Slovenia in collaboration with the Maritime Museum Piran and the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Slovenia Piran, was initially set up at the Museum of Salt-making in 2022, then in 2023 in the Piran Maritime Museum, and will now be on display at the Portorož Auditorium until 10 March 2024. 

 

You can visit the exhibition at the Portorož Auditorium’s White Hall of (on the ground floor, entrance through the lobby) until 26 February, during the Auditorium’s opening hours one hour before and between the various events (https://www.avditorij.si/si/program/).

 

The exhibition Božo Štajer: The World of the Salt Pans comprises 19 photographs from a series of sixty taken by the photographer in the area of the salt pans in Sečovlje and Fazan in Lucija in 1954. The photographs show the landscape of the salt pans, the salt workers, and the work and life in the salt pans. One of the photographs was used for the front cover page of the salt-working textbook Sol i Morske solane, published in 1954.

 

Božo Štajer was a highly successful and internationally renowned photographer. Among other things, he had his own photography business in Kranj, was a photojournalist in the Information Bureau of the Presidency of the Government of the People's Republic of Slovenia (PV LRS) and he was a head of the laboratory in the newly established photography section of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana (SAZU). A large part of his legacy are also photographs of film and film shoots during the period when he worked for Triglav Film.

 

This part of the legacy of the photographic collection of Božo Štajer is also invaluable in the context of the salt pans heritage, as it documents the last active periods of the unique interplay of work and life in the area of the Piran salt pans. 

 

Colophon

 

Selection of photographs: Andreja Zupanec Bajželj
Text: Andreja Zupanec Bajželj, Matjaž Kljun, Veronika Bjelica
Photographs from the collections of: National Museum of Contemporary History
Photographer: Božo Štajer
Design: Tomaž Perme
Photo editing: Sarah Poženel, Sašo Kovačič
Language editing: Henrik Ciglič 
Translation: Henrik Ciglič, Daniela Milotti