In his photography series Men Face Down the artist Matjaž Wenzel places lying bodies of men on the ground surrounded by nature or the built environment. The portrait of a reclining figure placed in an exterior setting, a body turned on its stomach face downwards is the polar opposite of the usual standing or sitting pose. Such a pose immediately evokes a feeling of discomfort in the spectator, a sense that something is wrong, and that alludes to misfortune, stupor, and even mortality.

The series portrays male middle-aged artists/authors from Maribor, a generation that has undergone sweeping changes in values and the social fabric, growing up with humanism and coming of age in a world of pragmatic materialism. The presentation of public figures from a contrasting point of view as dictated by marketing practice is established both in the artistic aspect of the depiction of the reclining figure and in the accompanying text based on intimate conversations with selected subjects.

The honesty and the opening up of the most often ignored and silenced topics establish new dialogues and lines of reflection. The lying-prone position is thus a punctum, an irritation, a state of appeal, of messaging and warning. Explanations are multi-layered.