Sequences of Truth and Deception

In the series Sequences of Truth and Deception (2015–2019) the author explores, as per her outlook on the subject, our ambivalent relationship to nature ruled by domination, exploration, and, paradoxically, its idealisation. In the anonymous portraits and still lifes, Bučan strives to create a complex and a deconstructed vision of nature.

The photographs in the series appear as playful sketches of our conditional and “exotic” love of nature. In contradiction to the incessant pollution inflicted by the contemporary way of life on our planet, many people still demonstrate various actions of minimal concern for the environment (i.e. planting trees, recycling, caring for endangered species, etc.), which only insignificantly affect our dire environmental reality. This series demonstrates this duality between our domination over nature and, on the other hand, our romanticisation of it. You could view Sequences of Truth and Deception as the author’s allegory of anthropocentrism, where it is difficult to discern whether the photographs depict love or domination.

Vanja Bučan (1973) is an internationally exhibited and awarded slovenian photographer, who lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Before getting her art degree (KABK, the Hague), she studied sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, and actively took part in environmental activism, which is evident in her artistic oeuvre.