Meetings: Photographs by Tone Mlakar and Members of the Anton Ažbe Photography Club
14 September – 2 November 2025
Gallery 140, Tábor, Czech Republic
Curators: Saša Nabergoj, Anja Zver (Škofja Loka Museum) and Miha Colner (Božidar Jakac Gallery – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art)
Professional contributor: Peter Pokorn Jr. (Anton Ažbe Photography Club)
Opening of the exhibition: Saturday, 13 September 2o25, at 4:00 PM
The Škofja Loka Museum, in collaboration with the Anton Ažbe Photo Club and the Tábor City Galleries, is preparing the exhibition Meetings, which will be on view at Gallery 140 in the centre of Tábor as part of the 2025 Tábor Meetings.
The exhibition Meetings brings together a selection of photographs from the fifty-year oeuvre of Tone Mlakar, an architect, set designer, and photographer from Škofja Loka, and images taken over the past two decades during the Tábor Meetings Festival by members of the Anton Ažbe Photography Club from Škofja Loka.
The initiative for cooperation between the towns goes back to 1989, when Damjan Prelovšek, Peter Pokorn Sr., and Jan Jelšik organised an exhibition of Mlakar’s photographs in Tábor. This led to the official twinning of the towns in 2006 and to regular encounters during the Tábor Meetings Festival, often accompanied by occasional photographic exhibitions.
The photographers from Škofja Loka have, over two decades, captured the pulse of Tábor, the festival events, and the bonds of friendship between the two towns. The opening part of the exhibition presents a selection of 25 photographs that shed light in particular on the festival parade, the role of the participants from Škofja Loka, and the symbolism of General Žižka, the central historical figure of Tábor.
The section dedicated to Tone Mlakar presents a selection of images from his extensive photographic archive, preserved in its entirety by the Škofja Loka Museum, with which the author documented events in Škofja Loka and its wider surroundings. The central focus of the selection is on presenting Mlakar’s photographic records from the second half of the 20th century, when the social situation at both the local and global level was distinctly constructive and focused on improving people’s living conditions. In post-war Europe, from the 1950s onward, there prevailed a spirit of modern humanism and thus a positive attitude towards social and economic progress, which promised a favourable and just future for the entire population. Mlakar’s images of construction sites for roads, factories, housing and public infrastructure, of public events, street scenes, or landscapes, testify to the immense idealism of people who believed in building the future through collective engagement. Above all, the photographic legacy of Tone Mlakar is an important historical document of a specific place and time, which he managed to record in a direct, lucid, and at times ironic manner.
