PERSONA

Photographer Andrej Lamut is presenting his first-time exhibited photo series Persona (2020-2023) at the exhibition in the ZRC Atrium. Since the beginning of his artistic journey, his guiding principle has been the connection between the concepts of “knowing” and “seeing,” reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous motto, saper vedere, which means “knowing how to see.” One could say that Andrej Lamut knows how to see the world beneath the surface. The visible world interests him only as a starting point for the transformation of the subject, which, through post-production processing, leads to a distinctly intimate interpretation that reveals the depths of the human psyche and altered states of consciousness. Even in his latest series, he delves into psychologically charged content. The title of the series, Persona, refers to a concept from the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. Persona (Latin for mask) is a part of human personality which the individual manifests in society. It is a means of social survival and necessary for communicating with the external world, allowing individuals to play different roles and adapt to social demands. At the same time, Jung warns that the persona can dominate the ego, the conscious Self, or disintegrate, leading to internal chaos.

In the Persona series, Andrej Lamut skilfully navigates the realm of metaphors for the human body and nature, symbolically reflecting the human psyche and calling for a return to authenticity. The human figure is depicted as a shadow, a reflection, a distortion, and a dispersed body. The intangibility of the body can be understood as a metaphor for the Self, which resides beneath the image that a person presents to the world. The first photograph of the exhibition, Persona VIII, is already quite telling. In the background of a portal opening in the middle of a stone wall, a shadow of a human figure is outlined. It is entirely out of reach, and its unattainability is emphasized by a semicircular wall that is gaping into the depths like an abyss. It seems as if we are looking from the external world into the human interior, where the Self dissolves and becomes a mere shadow of itself due to the dominance of the persona. A similar compositional solution is found in the Persona I photograph featuring a dead-end corridor, with a human figure in the background whose head is obscured by a lamp. The figure is suspended from the ground and appears to float in the air in an elongated, tense posture. In the play of light and shadow, it acts as a disturbance, disrupting the strict order of the wall’s structure and, by resisting gravity, creating the impression of something otherworldly. In Lamut’s interpretation, it functions as a metaphor for Jung’s shadow, the suppressed and unaccepted part of the human personality. The feeling of confinement and captivity is heightened by the photograph of the tower’s pillars of a city fortress (Persona II), displayed above the image. The stone monoliths rise into the sky, and when viewed from below, they appear dominant, reinforced by a strong chiaroscuro that intensifies their symbolism as sources of inner confinement and a sense of hopelessness.

The author presents the multifaceted, contradictory nature of the Self through contrasting interpretations, where the inner world acts as terra incognita. This combines, on the one hand, the fear of the unknown, and on the other, the desire to explore the unknown, as it may contain the marvelous thing. Lamut takes the viewer’s gaze through dark passages, the night shore, rocks from which disfigured anthropomorphic figures emerge – as if we are gazing at stations of man’s internal labyrinth, when the Self, exhausted by the weight of societal masks, finds itself in exile, at a crossroads, in a cul-de-sac, revealing its dark side, but also the poetic and even innocent aspects. In the Persona XI photograph, a female nude is discreetly captured, in a foetal posture, closed in upon herself, as if the woman instinctively wanted to protect what is most precious, fragile, and vulnerable within her – perhaps out of fear of what the external world might do to it. This photograph is balanced by the image of a rock in Persona XII: two closed forms, the soft female body, and the hard rock, can be interpreted as a metaphor for the primordial, original image of the world, reflecting an authentic aspect of the human personality hidden beneath the persona, carrying an unadulterated beauty within. The motif of nature as a reflection of the human interior is particularly evident in the Persona V photograph, which draws the viewer’s gaze beneath the restless water surface, into deep waters, synonymous with the depths of the human self.

In the centre of the installation is a large-format close-up self-portrait of the photographer (Persona III). The use of sfumato and the direct gaze create an enigmatic impression, as if nothing is hidden from the photographer. He “knows how to see” beneath the surface. The face-to-face encounter is unsettling, even evoking discomfort, as the gaze cannot be escaped, demanding confrontation – not only with the photographer but also with the viewer’s own self. This is further emphasized by the photograph adjacent to the self-portrait, which depicts a figure at a crossroads (Persona IV). It serves as a metaphor for pausing on the path of internal reflection before entering into the darkness of the soul, where much can be discovered.

A unique reminder of what a face presented to society can evolve into is evident in the photographs of men’s facial distortions (Persona XVIII–XX). The narrow vertical format brings the shots closer to mirrors that distort the image in their reflection. It appears as though the photographer is holding up a mirror to the viewer, inviting them to contemplate the price one pays for their social face in favour of the Self. The tilted angle of a spruce forest (Persona VI) can be related with a change in the viewer’s established way of looking – similar to the photographs of distorted physiognomies – the viewer’s gaze, accustomed to upright framing, crosses into the realm of the unpredictable and unknown.

The exhibition is concluded and thematically summarized with the Persona X photograph, which depicts the state of a person after they have discarded the mask and turned their back on the outside world; they vanish into a mysterious world, into the depths of their own self, gazing at it as if it were the horizon of their own truth. It is complemented by the photograph of a cave (Persona XVII), which reminds us of Leonardo’s account of a cave he once encountered: “And then, within me, two things were born all at once: fear and desire; fear in the face of a threatening and dark cave, desire to see if there was some marvelous thing inside.” To paraphrase this thought, we could say that, just as discovering and understanding the external world is a journey into the unknown, so is the journey into the depths of a person’s personality, paved with fears and desires. The light captured by the photographer at the end of the cave carries the symbolic message of a precious realization that there is still light within one, bringing hope. Perhaps this is the “marvelous thing” that rewards the courageous explorer of the depths of the human interior.

Andreja Rakovec