Branko Lenart has been distributing art photo postcards by regular mail since 1976, that is, for fifty years. He sent the first one from Arles, France, and so far, there have been well over a hundred of them. It is a black-and-white analog photograph, usually 10 × 15 cm in size, which is equipped on the back like a postcard, i.e. with a line for the recipient’s address and a space for a message. The recipient’s postal address is always written by hand, and a piece of paper with typed text is glued to the message area. This small but thoughtfully designed piece of mail is not only a personal greeting from the journey, but also part of a long-term artistic project in which the photograph, word, postmark and selected stamp together form a comprehensive message. Lenart often uses quotes from writers, musicians or other creators, which he connects with the visual motif of the photograph, thus creating a multi-layered play of meanings. His postcards are therefore at the same time a document of his travels, an intimate contact with his addressees, and a subtle form of mail art that has accompanied his photographic work for five decades. The exhibition - Branko Lenart : LEN / MailART at the Photon Gallery featured the original postcards as well as some enlargements of the text pages. The exhibition also featured the newest monograph of the same title with a text by dr. Marjeta Ciglenečki. Branko Lenart (1948, Slovenia) was born in former Yugoslavia and later migrated to neighbouring Austria with his family at 6 years of age. He studied pedagogy in Graz. In 1968 he became a member of the avant-garde art society Forum Stadtpark, that later grew into Camera Austria. He thought photography at the College of Art and Design (1979 – 2007) and the Technical College Joanneum (1996 – 2003) in Graz. Lenart is an internationally renowned photographer, who has widely travelled across the world ever since his youth. He attended various artist residencies like Apeiron Workshops in Millerton, New York, La Rochelle in Arles, France, and others in Oxford, Rome, Paris and London. His oeuvre sits between documentary and conceptual art photography. He dedicated his attention to the margins of society, be it the members of urban counter-cultures at the time or to the social conditions in the country and the peripheries. This genre of photography became to be known as “subjective topography”. Text: Marjeta Ciglenečki Proofreading: Darja Grobovšek Homšak Translation: Sebastian Walcher Design: Anika Kronberger, Erwin Wagner Printed by: Demago, Maribor