With a summer exhibition of artistic photographs, eminent Croatian photographer Željko Jelenski presents a series of photographs of landscapes and stone structures of the island of Pag.
About ten years ago, Jelenski began to take a greater interest in photographing landscapes and specific details of nature, where in his photographs he offers his own perspective on the natural beauties of Croatia. Jelenski is a photographer who regularly creates metaphysical studies in his nature photographs, one of the few for whom the camera is a tool of knowledge, not just a mere recorder of the breathtaking natural beauties.
‘He is a versatile photographer for whom every shot is an artistic unique, for whom nature is the most exciting challenge. Jelenski has a Japanese respect for nature in which the motif becomes the most lavish vision,’ wrote Marina Tenžera in Vjesnik.
Željko Jelenski, an artistic photographer, was born on November 23, 1961, in Zagreb, Croatia.
Jelenski is an eminent Croatian photographer who has been creating for twenty-three years and belongs to a generation that grew up with the rebellious spirit of Zagreb’s New Wave, for whom art was not just a job or posing but truly a way of life. He is a top stylist and has held 33 solo exhibitions to date, with his first realized in 1988 in Ljubljana at the Feniks gallery, where he exhibited photographs of the Venetian carnival titled “Mask People”, which he studied for three years and provided a personal reflection on the world-famous carnival. He has also participated in 14 group juried exhibitions.
In the Nova Gallery in Zagreb, in 1993, he realized a unique exhibition in Croatia and the world titled “Howling Horns”, where he showcased the fusion of photography and graphics in his works and introduced a new concept called photo-graphics. Jelenski selects three musicians, dresses the men in classic suits, the woman in a slightly erotic costume, and arms them with a saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, and trumpet. Such attribution heralds that these are jazz photographs as an artistic achievement of the author.
Photographs of landscapes and stone structures of the island of Pag – Melted Day, Vagabundo – Povljana – Island Pag, Ban Jelačić Square 3. The exhibition is for sale and can be viewed from July 20, 2010, to September 30, 2010 (open from 8 AM to 12 AM).
In a compositional sense, the paradox Less is more truly holds, as the author places his icons in a minimal space, defined only by two props – a ladder and a chair. In the same way, he freely arranges them in different poses and shoots… Later, through an alchemical process, where graphic negatives and positives are exchanged multiple times, using montage, Jelenski obtains a series of black-and-white, white-and-black compositions. The result of this photo-graphic process is a real echo of unreal reality, speaking in a pure, clear visual language, freed from mimesis.
From the very beginning of his photography career, Jelenski specialized in portrait concert photography, and to this day, his portfolio includes many world musicians such as Frank Zappa, Santana, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Keith Richards, Lou Reed, Skin (Skunk Anansie), Sky (Morcheeba), John Mayall, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Joe Cocker, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Lenny Kravitz, Huey Morgan (Fun Lovin Criminals), The Edge (U2), Mick Jones (The Clash), Alice Cooper, Robert Smith (The Cure), Tricky, Moby, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, B.B. King, Macy Gray, Stacey Kent, Patricia Barber, James Carter, Sonny Rollins, Steve Vai, Henry Rollins, Bryan Ferry, Billy Idol, Peter Gabriel, and hundreds of other musicians, whose photographs carry the author’s personal calculation. He is preparing a photo-monograph on world rock musicians in a large format of three hundred pages titled Rock ‘n’ Roll On Stage by Jelenski.
In 2009, he published a book of photographs of jazz musicians who have performed in Zagreb (Croatia) over the last twenty years, titled “Jazz Me Up By Jelenski”, for which he was praised in 2010 at the Photodays event in Rovinj (Croatia) in the category for publishing.
About ten years ago, Jelenski began to take a greater interest in photographing landscapes and specific details of nature, where in his photographs he offers his own perspective on the natural beauties of Croatia.
