DEJAN MIJOVIC, FINALIST AND PUBLISHED IN OUR BLACK & WHITE 2019
For my project I wanted to explore the period in life of active retirement, following “golden age”.
Mostly I focused on the members of my family and relatives. Every elder experiences it differently depending on the circumstances and his living habitat.
On the other hand they all have to find specific activities that fulfil their day and most importantly the purpose for the rest of their lives. Some of them are real fighters living all alone others are luckier still living in couples but all of them love life.
THE POPULATION AGEING IS AN ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SOCIETY
This is a time of great social changes, which are largely due to the development of political,economic and demographic factors. Due to continuous reduction in fertility and mortality, especially in the developed world – including European countries– we are faced with accelerated population ageing and the changes and problems related to it.
In my country Slovenia, with population just over 2 million people, population ageing is a process that can not be avoided. With the decline of births, with longer life expectancy and with lower mortality the age structure of the population is changing: the share of children aged 0-14 is decreasing, while the share of working age population (15-64 years) and the share of older people (aged 65+)are increasing.
Our society has already entered the “mature years” as the share of older people – in the so-called “golden age” – is steadily increasing; at the same time the attitudes towards ageing and older people are also substantially changing. Experiencing and anticipating longer lives, our feelings are often mixed: we are delighted because we can hope to live long, but we are also afraid because we do not know whether at old age we will have the resources to survive.
About Dejan Mijović
Freelance photography journalist Dejan Mijović, born on 18 September 1976 and based in Sevnica, is assistant photo editor of the biggest daily newspaper in Slovenia Delo.si web portal.
He graduated in photography from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering with the graduation thesis entitled The Psychological and Visual Effects of Diverse Layouts of Exhibited Photographs.
Mijović has been involved in photography for the past 20 years, ever since undertaking studies of graphic technology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering. As a photographer, Mijović worked in various contexts, serving, among others, as the official photographer on the Navigator of the Seas passenger ship, contributing to various media, including Jana, Ona, Mladina, STA and Žurnal, and receiving diverse photography commissions.
In 2010, Mijović sustained an injury and was left completely paralysed from the neck down. Through amazing luck, strong willpower and lengthy rehabilitation, and driven by his as yet unfulfilled desire to pursue photography, the tetraplegic was back in the saddle, and has since held several one-man shows and participated in a number of group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. Recently, he has been polishing his photography skills with Klavdij Sluban, a French photographer of Slovenian descent based in Paris.
Mijović’s great flair for composition and light contrasts renders his portraits of random individuals far more than simply frozen moments in time but, rather, perceptive accounts of their life stories.
His black-and-white photographs, a preoccupation of recent years, aim to capture diverse moods of his closest and long-standing friends also in their most intimate moments. He has received some major awards, most notably Third Prize at the 2014–15 NIKON Photo Contest. [Official Website]
