Once They Were Warriors, retrospective photographic exhibition and museum evening, 17 January 2025 at 6 pm
Urban Golob (1975-2015) was a photographer, journalist, film-maker, musician and much more, but above all a mountaineer. From the very first moment, so to speak. He made his first mountaineering climb with his father when he was only nine years old. He was the same age when he was diagnosed with soft palate cancer. He spent the next four years mainly in hospitals, and by the time he was 14, he had already climbed Mont Blanc.
He started climbing seriously in 1985 and has since completed some 900 climbs, including over 70 first ascents, mainly in his home mountains, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Canada and the Himalayas.
His most notable feat was the first winter crossing of the Slovenian Alps (320 km, 16,545 m ascent), which he did between 15 and 27 February 1998 to promote the Foundation for Children with Cancer and Blood Diseases, and about which TV Slovenia also made a film called “Pot za život” (The Path for Life). With this project, he was able to raise 40,000 Deutschmarks and, above all, to promote the work of the Foundation for Children with Cancer and Blood Diseases to the public. He was one of the founders of the summer and winter camps for children with cancer. These became so popular that they were taken over by associations for patients with certain other diseases, such as haemophilia.
As a mountaineer, he also worked in climbing and outdoor sports photography. In the period between 1995 and 2015, he was undoubtedly the most important photographic chronicler of climbing and mountaineering events in Slovenia. His photographic legacy offers an insight into this time, society and the outstanding individuals of that time in Slovenia – not only in the field of mountaineering. Visitors will be able to feel some of the feelings captured in the eternity of his photographs at the retrospective exhibition Once Were Warriors. Above all, they will be able to feel his indomitable spirit, which defies time and proves more and more over the years that Urban Golob has written the history of mountaineering in the most beautiful way possible.
In order to show and present the spirit of Urban Golob’s vision of the world through his photographs as authentically as possible, they are not captioned. In this way, everyone can find what is most important and valuable to them.
The exhibition has been prepared by Peter Mikša. It will be on display until 17 March 2025.
