Luka Dakskobler is a documentary photographer and photojournalist from Kranj, Slovenia. He has a BA in English and Journalism from the University of Ljubljana and has been working as a journalist and photojournalist since 1995. He specializes in in-depth stories and news. In his long career, he has worked with many respected magazines, covering culture, entertainment and events, before moving to press social and environmental issues, and news coverage.
He has been a regular contributor to National Geographic Junior, the magazine’s kids version, for 15 years. He has also produced long-term stories for National Geographic Slovenia and National Geographic Traveler (Slovenia). His news photos are distributed around the world by photo agencies SOPA Images and its partner agencies (Getty Images, Zuma Press, SIPA USA, DPA etc.), German photo agency Imago and Polaris Images from New York. In addition to numerous Slovenian newspapers, magazines, online media and institutions, he has also published in National Geographic Traveler UK, The Guardian, TAZ, The Telegraph, The Atlantic, Newsweek Poland, Smithsonian Magazine, Terre Sauvage, The Times, ORF, Yahoo, Weekend.at, iucn.org, Time Magazine, Der Standard, Huffington Post etc. He is also a mentor of documentary photography and an official photographer for several event organizers in Slovenia.
Affliction-geist – The exhibition is a combination of two ongoing (now a year and a half long) projects, documenting social and political dynamics of recent times, the fight and flight of mind during times of the coronavirus and its political abuse, the rise of self-isolation and authoritarian, increasingly restrictive order. It is about closing in and bursting out, growing quiet and speaking up, sitting down alone and standing up with the crowd, resigning and resisting. It is about a disease – that of giving up and retreating from the world, and that of politics abusing a crisis to attack our freedom. For more than a year and a half, Slovenia is fighting on these two fronts – the epidemic and diminishing of freedom, democracy and rule of law. The presented projects were not meant to be combined, but they organically do, because they are related. There is no talk of isolation and mental defeat or anger and revolt without considering the far-right direction in which we’re well on our way.
