From the ruins of the well-known Fotopub, an established festival of documentary photography in Novo mesto, emerged a renewed and well executed re-contextualisation of the new and artist-run Fotopub. The motive behind our newly established team is to broaden the focus of the festival into contemporary photography, to promote Slovene and foreign photographers of the younger generation and to build bridges between professionals and the amateur public. Fotopub is therefore attempting to develop a necessary platform, intended for connecting young artists and professionals with their already established colleagues, thus evoking a constructive dialogue amongst them.

From the 1st till the 6th of August 2016, six group exhibitions will be held by emerging Slovene and foreign artists, a photography book fair, music and entertainment program and a portfolio review, which will bring well known and respected artists, curators, editors, publishers and gallerists from the international art world to Novo mesto.

The new Fotopub festival intends to bring to Novo mesto, a town in Slovenia, which has been culturally and artistically neglected, awareness about the importance of the revival of rural towns in the broader national or global context, by bringing examples of established trends within global contemporary art and with this subsequently contribute to versatility, quality and the development of Slovenian artistic culture. In our efforts to expand the festival in the future, we are starting off in Novo mesto with an infrastructure built by the previous festival for the past 13 years, but further, we see its potential to become an international key player in the development of the emerging contemporary photography.

Fotopub directors:
Jure Kastelic & Dušan Josip Smodej

Fotopub team:
Aljaž Celarc
Bojan Mijatović
Dare Sintič
Eva Pavlič Seifert
Gregor Kocijančič
Klemen Ilovar
Miha Erjavec
Reinis Lismanis
Tadej Vindiš
Alex F. Webb
Anja Zver
Živa Kleindienst