editorial

Žiga Koritnik: Igor Delorenzo Omahen

The first time I met Igor he asked me to join the exhibition Giganti. He hung huge portrait photos made by different photographers on the outer walls of the Škuc Gallery. After the exhibition we met occasionally at concerts (such as Nick Cave or Laurie Anderson), in KUD, and at other places. Then he came to live in our neighborhood. We met while walking our dogs. The first time we met after he moved to our neighborhood he asked me why I didn't invite him to join the exhibition Direktn'ga iz mojga serca! I was preparing at the time in KUD France Prešeren. He posed the question in the same way he always used to communicate with people: calmly, but no beating around the bushes. I answered it was because I simply wasn't familiar with his work; in other words, his work had not come to my attention yet. This was the first time he clearly expressed his decision not to expose his name in public. That is why I later understood his decision and desire to use the name Giovanni Nessuno. Probably it was also a kind of a joke. Soon we were meeting every day – at his place or mine, drinking coffee in the morning, or sitting in the garden in the afternoon. We talked about photography, our personal experiences and relationships with people we knew, our parents, growing up and many other things. I thought he had a great sense of humor and that he was a very unique person; when I got to know him better he turned out to be a very meticulous person and someone who is prone to complicate about things. But he was also very forgiving and tolerant, and I could talk to him about almost anything. I learned a lot from him. He admired me for doing everything so quickly and efficiently, and I always said I would never have the patience to work like he did, i.e. slowly and systematically. He often thought about how to get started and his preparations took forever before he actually got to work. But I thought about his way of doing things and I found a lot of good things about it. His way of work and his precision are evident in his photos, because his studies appear simple only at the first glance. But with the distance of time passed his photos started to “vibrate”, since initially I never saw them as a whole, as one piece. He had a vision that very few people have. And he was the same about everything he was doing, be it carpentry, working in the garden, or in the house.
And then they moved away and we met less often. Each of us had his own life, with problems and work. He came by once in a while and when he told me he was ill, I could not believe it was so serious that very soon he will not be with us anymore. He did not talk about it in a loud or dramatic way. First and foremost he remained a modest guy. After our last lunch together at my place, right after his surgery, we had not seen each other for very long. Soon the news started coming that he lost a lot of weight and that he will not be with us for much longer. In June 2004 I was working on a joint exhibition of different Slovenian photographers in Cankarjev Dom, and a few days before the opening he called me to say goodbye. He said he was feeling very weak and that it was better if I did not come to see him. I said I would like to see him one more time. It was probably at that time that he decided to leave me all his negatives, photos, slides, his entire life, as it were, and so I could make this exhibition. He said I was the best colleague he ever had, his successor in a way. And even though he was feeling really ill we went through all his negatives and all his slides, and he explained to me what his vision was and how the exhibition should look like, where it should be, who should collaborate to make it happen … We said goodbye, saying: See you! This was the last time I saw him. And then one Sunday, when I and Vid were leaving for Vis, Nataša called me to tell me that Igor passed away. At that very same moment bells were ringing in the Trnovo church and I will never forget that sound. As if he came to drink his instant coffee one more time, in which I always had to put just the right amount of sugar and milk. Not too much and not too little.
He put a huge responsibility and amount of work on my shoulders, and I could not get started on it until a few months ago. The photos were waiting in boxes in my studio, ordered the way Igor has ordered them. There is lots of interesting stuff left in those folders. And this is how and why this exhibition happened.

Žiga Koritnik

Ljubljana, 7 September 2006