Inge Morath
Inge Morath: (1923 Graz - 2002 New York) Border.Areas - Last Journey

World famous photographer Inge Morath, who died at the end of January 2002, journeyed through the borderland between southern Styria and Slovenia searching for clues to her own origins and the interaction of history, daily life and culture in the border area.

Born in Graz in 1923, photographer Inge Morath embarked on a special journey through the borderland between southern Austria and Slovenia. Her project for Graz 2003 entitled "Border.Areas" became a trip through time on a number of different levels - geographical, autobiographical, historical and cultural - with the multi-faceted photographer herself as linking element.

(from left) Inge Morath (detail): Boy with an mushroom, Conductor, train Dravograd - Maribor

The photographers last project before her death in January 2002 is based on an idea by Regina Strassegger and dedicated to many features of this special border which exists since 1919. For Morath, who in her varied photographic work (including jobs with international magazines such as Magnum, Life, Paris Match and Vogue), always tried to capture human aspects and everyday life rather than spectacular events, it was also a search for her own roots.

"I have a secret longing for this stretch of land on the border - lets do something." This wish uttered by Morath in autumn 1999 during her first encounter with film-maker and journalist Regina Strassegger in Vienna has now become reality. Strassegger describes the complex outcome as a "photo-cinematic journey of discovery that follows seasons and life cycles, back and forth between here and there, rural and urban, commonplace and special. The results will be featured in a film (film script and direction: Regina Strassegger), a book (Prestel Verlag) and an exhibition of some 120 examples of Moraths photography.

For the globe-trotter Morath, this project was also a trip through her own past, to the home of her ancestors and a house in the vineyards that had been a life-long friend.

Her mothers family, Wiesler-Morath, originated from what used to be "Lower Styria", now Slovenia, and the area was full of memories for Morath: "When I was a child and walked for days through the vineyards and hillsides with my grandfather, and we found shells from a period thousands of years ago when this land was an ocean, I felt like I was on a submarine taking a trip around the world."

This, however, is also an area with historical and political implications: traumatic years during two World Wars, expulsion, fascism, communism and finally the metamorphoses of the present have all marked the area and its inhabitants.

The exhibition of Moraths borderland photography will be opened on the first anniversary of her death on 30 January 2003 in Graz (Künstlerhaus), and will then go on an international tour to New York, Budapest, Slovenj Gradec, Ljubljana and other cities.

The film will be shown on 3sat and ORF TV; German- and English-language premieres are scheduled in Graz and New York.

Idea and concept: Regina Strassegger

Realisation: Regina Strassegger (book and film); Kurt Kaindl, Brigitte Blüml (exhibition design)

A project by Graz 2003 - Cultural Capital of Europe, in cooperation with 3sat