Boštjan Pucelj tells us a story about shopping carts

On Tuesday, January 9, 2024, at 5:00 p.m., the opening of a photography exhibition entitled “Pogrešani v akciji” (eng. Missing in Action) took place in the gallery of the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana. The author is a professional photographer from Novo mesto Boštjan Pucelj.

During his student years, he attended the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geodesy, and photography only became his passion later, purely by chance, when he was inspired to do so by a colleague who was photographing the well-known Rock Otočec concert at the time. Later Boštjan began to explore the world of photography himself with an analog camera. Over time he received numerous awards for his work at competitions and festivals, such as the Photo of the Year by the magazine Emzin, Slovenia Press Photo and Fotopub. He has also published eight photography books, the first in 2005 titled Babi.

He says that he wants to capture the present real moment while photographing. While looking through his photos one day, he realized there was often a shopping cart motif. He wanted to include them in a story, so he began systematically looking for locations where they were placed in an (at first glance) unnatural environment, i.e. they were alienated, vandalized, and processed … This is how the story of the Missing in Action)+ photos was born. He wanted to present shopping carts in the role of certain people who are exploited, discarded, enslaved, etc. in modern society. He focused on different environments, positions and conditions of the carts. He confided to us that one of his favourite photos is the one where the shopping cart is converted into a chair. He recorded it in Berlin when he visited the now sadly deceased Slovenian writer and poet Maruša Krese.

He says that he seeks inspiration for his works from everyday life, and he does not get burdened at the beginning of the creative process; through the process itself, he sees where the path or the story takes him and adapts the photography technique to the content. He considers the content to be much more important than the quality of the photo itself: “One photo can say very little, but a series of photos can create a story,” Pucelj concluded the conversation.

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