Scratched patina

The earthquake disaster in Ljubljana, which happened a century ago, resonated especially at the museum exhibition (in the new part of the National Gallery in Ljubljana) and last but not least on the CD-ROM prepared by i-Rose on behalf of NUK. The CD-ROM presents original photographs, postcards, newspaper pages, plans and images of Peter Grasselli and Ivan Hribar, the earthquake and post-earthquake mayors of Ljubljana.

The material is quite extensive, quite varied, beautifully arranged and satisfactorily equipped with texts. The photographs are good, some even excellent, but all are the work of the then famous photographer from Ljubljana, Viljem Helfer. This may be a little annoying, as we know that after the earthquake in Ljubljana, hundreds of photographers from all over Europe gathered and took thousands of photos. Many of these are preserved in the archives in Vienna. Some of Helfer’s photographs could be missing, as the same or similar motifs are repeated, and some have nothing to do with the earthquake at first glance. The selection of postcards is kind of cute, but sadly a bit narrow; it more illustrates post-earthquake Ljubljana, and less pre-earthquake Ljubljana, which would be more interesting.

Newspaper pages are collected in an exemplary manner, but NUK took into account the representation of newspapers in Slovene regions and political orientations more than by lemmatics. People also miss foreign newspapers, especially the ones from Klagenfurt, Graz, Trieste, Prague and Vienna as the earthquake in Ljubljana was reported at a higher journalistic level in these newspapers. And their polemical articles were also interesting.

City plans remain on the sidelines; it might seem to support them with dilemmas that have evaluated and devalued some recovery plans; also photographs of both architects, Max Fobiania and Camille Sille, could be next. The presentation of the then mayors of Ljubljana, Grasselli and Hribar, is far too modest. There is no international or at least Austrian media dimension of the Ljubljana earthquake, which was very large and lasted for several years.

There are no interesting “young” posters, which were created especially in Vienna and invited the citizens of the capital to contribute to the destroyed Ljubljana and its unfortunate inhabitants.

The CD ROM, as it says in the cover letter, is intended for wide and non-professional use. That is why the presentation could be more dynamic, even more varied in content and, for example, a bit temperamental.