2009 was my first real year of living and working in Serbia and it was wrought with more questions than answers. I’m still trying to figure out what last year was and what the next will bring, in terms of life and my photos. But I think these pictures may show some of what this was about for me, my relationship to friends and strangers, places and stories. These are not just my “best” pictures but include many more personal. A visual taste of my year. And I’m ecstatic to be back for another take.

Of course, I am a month past due with this in part to recovering from the holidays stateside and setting up everything here for 2010. I’ll have much more to share in the near future on what’s new these days, including projects, collaborations and websites. As always you can see my work at www.mattlutton.com and dig through my archive (and buy pictures!) at archive.mattlutton.com.

Thanks for keeping up with my work and supporting us here at Dvafoto. Happy New Year!

Hope you met the New Year well and that the hangovers aren’t too bad. Here’s my view from the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, where I’m hanging in a cabin with many of my best friends with great food and even better beer. And lots of snow.

I’ll be in Seattle for another two weeks and before heading back to Belgrade on the 14th of January. Safe travels everyone, I can’t wait to see more work and stories from all of you and continue developing our work here at Dvafoto. We’ve got some great changes and updates coming soon, we can’t wait to show you.

Incredibly last minute announcement but I will be in New York City next week, December 21st through 23rd, for a quick visit with publications, editors and friends and to continue my project I See A Darkness. I will have new work and portfolios to share, including an under-wraps book project that will begin immediately upon my return to Serbia in January. (Did I even mention that I’m back in Seattle for the holidays? It’s been busy.)

If you are in the City and feel like meeting up to see work, see an exhibition (I’ve got Ballen, Frank, and Mosse on my schedule right now) or grab a beer, be in touch! It’ll be a crazy quick visit but it might be my only one this year.

I’ve been trying for the last two weeks to put together some sort of introduction to my ongoing project about the destruction of a large Roma camp here in Belgrade, and words have really failed me. I can’t even come up with an original title (this one is hopefully temporary). I have a lot to say about the community I’ve been photographing for four months and how the destruction of their camps was handled, and hopefully I’ll have something coherent to share soon. But I’ve been teasing and working the project too long not to share some of the images here, especially as this first chapter has ended. So you’ll have to wait for some more of the back story and future plans for the project, though I can point you to this news article for some sad details about the exodus, which I am continuing to photograph. Click on any of the images to go to my website which has a small edit of the project.

So, I was not in Perpignan last week like I said and planned to be. A story that I have been working on since April about the displacement of significant and entrenched Roma settlements here in Belgrade hit its climax last Monday and I decided to stay here to photograph. I look forward to sharing part of this important story soon.
But first I wanted to share some new images that I mentioned a few weeks ago from my Kosovo New Born project, which I began in 2007.

I returned to the youngest country in the world again in early August to get further into the periphery of issues and locations that are at the heart of Kosovo’s political and economic stability and viability. While it was a difficult trip, with some closed doors and unproductive scheduling, I am pleased that many pictures are contributing new visions and perspectives on the broader sentiments I am hoping to capture with this project.

The next step for me is to (frighteningly enough) prepare a book dummy for this admittedly unfinished body of work. I started my degree at the University of Washington six years ago and I’ve decided that it is high time to finally graduate. So I endeavor to finish my last requirement: a thesis. As a multidisciplinary exercise for my degree in the Comparative History of Ideas program I am attempting to create a historical, documentary and scholarly approach to Kosovo in the form of a more permanent contemporary photographic document. Hence my interest in Peter van Agtmael’s new book 2nd Tour, Hope I don’t Die, which I think works on much the same level. As this project comes together I’ll have more to share, though I’m sure it will take more time than I’ve budgeted in my head.

Also in Balkan news, I’ve seen (and have been sent) a number of increasingly alarmist articles about the dire state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In my opinion, and that of many smart colleagues here, while it is not a happy or stable place Bosnia isn’t about to explode either. As a western writer friend here opined, this is as much a cry for relevance by Balkan commentators in this short-attention span world as anything else (and as someone with interest in keeping eyes on the important stories here, I’m not exactly against this). So that said, the continuing slow decline of Bosnia’s political foundations is worth paying attention to. I’m continuing to photograph some of these ideas with my project This Time Tomorrow: Post-War Bosnia at the Crossroads and will try to provide updates from my perspective here in Belgrade.

I’m glad to see M. Scott’s new posts, not least of which it keeps you all busy with content while I get myself back in gear to post more. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been on the road over the last few weeks photographing a number of things: in Bosnia the Srebrenica Anniversary and the famous bridge divers in Mostar and more recently new work on my project Kosovo New Born. I will have a longer post in the next week or so talking about this Kosovo work, with updates from this trip and my plans to bring it together in book form and as a feature at a popular web magazine.
The next few weeks, before a dvafoto trip to Perpignan for Visa pour l’Image (more from M Scott and I on this soon!), will be devoted to editing and producing a book dummy and continuing with the Roma Relocation project here in Belgrade.

Speaking of books, I just came across 2nd Tour, Hope I Don’t Die by Peter van Agtmael, just published by Photolucida through their Critical Mass portfolio review. I’ve been ambivalent about some of van Agtmael’s work in the past but this package really seems to codify an interesting perspective and photographs about our modern American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would be very interested to see this in person, do let me know if you get a copy. I’m curious how this sort of personal narrative about a larger “news” story works in book form, not least of which because I’m approaching this with my work, but also for its ability to open a possibly new medium for distributing long term documentary that is closer to what typically runs in the mainstream press than book publishing.

July 11, 2009 was the fourteenth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and it was marked by another mass funeral for some 520 souls whose remains were identified in the last year. Estimates of the total deaths in this genocide are around 8000 Muslim men and boys. I previously visited the town of Srebrenica and the memorial in the nearby village of Potocari in 2007 as a student traveler in Bosnia, and this past Saturday was my first return to the site since then. I rode one of dozens of free buses from around Bosnia to the memorial service with scores of pilgrims and family members of the victims. Of course a sad, powerful day but more than a decade on from the event an attitude of solidarity and keeping the memory alive sweeps through the crowd. There is still grief, and fear, amongst those who experienced this horrible event but we are entering a time where the future, not the past, is what must be called in to question. Next year will be the fifteenth anniversary of Srebrenica, and there will again be a burial of many more victims along with speeches from many honorable guests, and we will still ask why. But now too we must face the fact that politics and social development are reaching the stagnated limits of the Dayton Accords and some sort of break with this peace treaty must happen. Slowly or suddenly, Bosnia and Herzegovina must avert itself from its current dead-end path towards some polity that is equitable, sustainable and promising. This country today displays hardly any reflection of those attributes, a harsh reality in this worsening economic climate along a steep path towards European integration.

These are a few pictures from the ride and memorial. A memorable day, not least for the incredible effort amongst all the people to make it out to the remote town. The buses were to leave Sarajevo at 5am but were delayed by the crowds of citizens who could not fit into the allotted amount of buses, who demanded transportation to the memorial before they would clear the road. Hours late my bus, filled with somber but enthusiastic pilgrims, arrived at the field and grave site before a humbling prayer and burial service. After, on the ride home, everyone was in a good, warm mood filled with pride for being able to honor the memorial with their presence. This was a fascinating experience and I was honored to visit with the Bosnians who worked hard to pay their respects.

This weekend will be the fourteenth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia. I will be there to continue my documentation of the Srebrenica memorial as part of my larger body of work about modern Bosnia called “This Time Tomorrow”.

I’ll be on the road for the next few weeks while reporting in Bosnia (as part of “This Time Tomorrow”) and in Kosovo for my ongoing project “Kosovo New Born”. You can reach me via my general cell number +381 065 678 5316 (Serbia) but at times I will be on +387 066 141 432 (Bosnia) and +377 049 132 953 (Kosovo) as well as my email luttonm (at) gmail. I look forward to posting my work here in the future, as well as other links and pictures I find along the way, though my posting will likely slow over the coming weeks. Srećan put.

Sorry for my lack of posting over the last month or so, I’ve been kept very busy with a roadtrip, an assignment in Albania and work on a personal project or two. But I have a lot of little things saved up to post, and will catch up on a few today.

But first I thought I’d share a couple of things from what I’ve been up to. The first of three stories I shot in Albania for the New York Times / International Herald Tribune with Dan Bilefsky, having to do with Sunday’s elections in Albania, has been published: “Albanians, Cut Off, Get Set to Vote”. We have two more stories to go to print in the coming weeks, and I’ll share those and more pictures when I can.

Last, a little peek at a project I’m working on here in Belgrade about Roma communities who are in danger of losing their homes when the city/state redevelops the land that they are squatting on. A lot of issues going on here, and I’ve been trying to unpack it over the last month or so and there is much more to do, this really is in its beginning stages. A little bit further down the line I’ll be able to share more pictures and more of the story. For now, a couple of frames:

Next up are another couple of short trips back to Kosovo and to Bosnia to continue my stories there. I look forward to having more to show you all soon, thanks for having a look!

Thanks to M. Scott for all the terrific posts while I was on the road the last couple of weeks. I was showing an old friend of mine from Seattle around the region, including an awesome 10-day car trip from Belgrade to Sarajevo, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and back. I’ll probably post some of those stories and pictures at some point, but just one for now.

Can anyone explain this to me? We were staying at this 60s-era Yugoslav hotel/resort along the Montenegrian/Albanian border called Ada Bojana. At breakfast, in the cavernous crazy restaurant, I saw this painting on the wall. This has to be a representation of Nick Ut’s infamous Vietnam photograph, right? So, but why in ‘officially sanctioned’ art in the dining room of this resort? What does it mean?? Is this common in Yugoslavian/communist ‘art’?

I’m trying to get back up to speed with posting here, I appreciate the patience (lots of catching up to do here, plus I’m photographing a lot these days). I’ll mention again that I have begun to twitter (twitter.com/mattlutton) and will muse on everything from time to time there.