Klavdij Sluban is a French photographer of Slovenian origin, born in Paris in 1963 to refugee parents. Working with an analogic camera, his personal research is rigorous and coherent – often rich in literary references – with deep blacks giving his poetic writing a rigour and accuracy free from any didactic or exotic trait.
Elected “Artist of the Year” in South Korea in 2017, his black and white photographs of the contemporary world have an immediacy and a sensitivity that brings them to the margins of journalistic reporting. Great traveler, he explored the Eastern Europe – the Balkans, the Black Sea, the former Soviet Union, the Baltic Sea, Siberia passing through prisons and disciplinary camps for teenagers – to finally reach the spiritual land of Japan and the Latin America.
He has received numerous awards including the Prix de Photographie de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France in 2015, the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2009, the Leica Prize in 2004, the Niépce Prize in 2000 and the Villa Médicis Hors-les Murs in 1998.
Klavdij Sluban’s works have been exhibited in prestigious museums such as the Museum of Photography in Helsinki, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in Guatemala City. In 2013 the Niépce Museum dedicated the retrospective Après l’obscurité, 1992-2012 to him.