Lana Slezic is a documentary photographer originally from Croatia. She is still alive at the time
that we are talking. She moved in Canada in the 1960s but she confirms that the language,
culture and rhythms of her country of birth guided her all the way during some moments in her
life. Between 1992 to 1996 she studied kinesiology at the Western University of Ontario. After
that she traveled in Asia for 6 months and that’s where she fell in love with the activity of
capturing images and decided to go back in 1999 to Canada to study photojournalism. For the
first two years of her career she worked for newspapers but she always felt that she was more
interested in documentary photography. Therefore she left the photojournalism world and
started to work on project on her side and developed her talent in the art of story-telling. Since
then she has work in countries mostly in Europe and the Middle East but she plans on going
back to countries that first inspired her like India. For me it was really important to choose a
women photographer because I feel that I get more connected to her work. This photographer
has marked history since she photographed realities that are kind of hidden to us. It has helped
people that ignored those situations , I’m talking here more about 2 specific projects which are ‘’
Afghanistan’’ and ‘’Canada –Us border’’ . She uses very dramatic and significant symbols and
colors. I’m going to focus mainly on the project of Afghanistan because Lana really saw this
event differently than most of the photographers that were there. In fact , she says that usually
photographers stay there to catch the image that will explain the best the situation that is going
on and after that they live. For Lana, she stayed the 6 weeks that she had signed her contract for
but then she stayed to study other stories that would be interesting to talk about because every
photographer have their own way of seeing a situation. In fact , that’s where she came up with
the Idea of doing a project about Afghan women’s. She slowly found her curiosity over Girls in
Women in Afghanistan growing. She faced very sad, frustrating and meaning full situations. She
stayed there and documented women’s life in Afghanistan for over a year and actually was able
to prove with those photographs that the women status is still very bad in this country. Since fall
2001, some would argue that the political and cultural position of Afghan women has improved.
The most recent constitution states that "the citizens of Afghanistan - whether man or woman –
have equal rights and duties before the law." But something written on a page doesn’t replace
the images that Slezic cough during her stay in that country. Slezic says’’ Many girls are denied
an education and forced to work at home instead. Often women are not allowed to leave their
homes without a male relative. Domestic violence is commonplace and accepted. Girls who are
raped can be imprisoned. Families sell their daughters to settle land and monetary disputes. In
some provinces, self-immolation is occurring and is almost always the result of family tensions
due to forced marriage. Honor killings are not uncommon. Women who were widowed during
the Soviet occupation or the Taliban regime have turned to begging and prostitution, otherwise
unable to feed their children. The illiteracy rate for women in rural Afghanistan is greater than
95 percent. On a grass-roots level, the human rights and gender equality issues are endless and
the effects of centuries of oppression cannot be expected to disappear overnight. But
something has to change.’’ With that project she brings another story to the fall of the Talibans
in 2001 after military troups from various countries came into town. Things have changed but
not enough to tell there’s a significant change in the status of the Afghan women. They are
human beings they have to be treated with respect. That’s what Lana reports in this project. She
was also chosen by an international jury as one of 12 young photographers worldwide invited to
participate in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam in November 2005
because of that project. She made a book about this that is called Forsaken. She has marked
history even if she’s still alive because even if she was very young she was able to capture those
stories in a very sensitive and nice way. Since she was a woman it was easier for her to connect
with this story because women can communicate with each other without talking Lana Slezic
says.
