Fran Vesel (1884–1944)

He was born to a locksmith father, Andrej, and mother, Anna (née Regoršek). Vesel attended a trade school after his first year of grammar school and initially worked in his father's shop. Between 1912 and 1923 he worked at the Office for the Construction of Torrential Watercourses in Ljubljana. From 1917 until the end of the First World War, he served as a black soldier without arms in Judenberg. After the death of his father, he moved into a house on Komenskega Street, where he lived as a landlord on the rent. He died in 1944 after a long illness.

His uncle Ferdo Vesel inspired him to take up photography, and he began to collect Slovenian cultural documents, reproductions of artworks, articles and photographs. He started taking photographs as a 16-year-old student at the First Slovenian Art Exhibition at the Ljubljana City Hall in 1900. He became friends with members of Slovenian Modernism, especially Otto Župančič and Ivan Cankar, whom he also portrayed on several occasions. He was particularly interested in the documentary side of photography, and in addition to a series of portraits of artists in their studios, he also made a series of portraits of artists on a mortuary stage, as well as a series of portraits in Slovenian national costume and landscape photographs. In his will, he bequeathed his entire collection to the Slovenian nation.