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!

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I wanted to share my latest project which I shot over two weeks in March, which I probably hinted at in some earlier posts. This Time Tomorrow: Post-War Bosnia at the Crossroads is my attempt to describe a complex feeling that is settling in around Bosnia about its hopes for a prosperous future.

I have been introducing these pictures with this text:

Bosnia is facing a growing challenge to efficient and prosperous survival as time advances with a peace treaty functioning as a constitution. We read more and more often news stories about Bosnia’s instability and ill-prospects for a unified future with two ‘entities’ – the Federation and Republika Srbska – butting heads amongst entrenched political and ethnic divides. Citizens and the economy are inching toward a precipice prepared by political interest and ineffectual international oversight. War is not going to be the answer, but innocent people will suffer just the same.

But here is the longer version (with informative links!) that I hope will more fully explain the situation in Bosnia today:

For almost fifteen years since the Dayton Agreement the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina has stayed together through one of the world’s most complex political arrangements. Bosnia’s constitution, which mandates two ‘entities’ (consisting of the Federation of Bosniaks and Croats and the Republika Srbska of Bosnian Serbs), is an annex to a peace treaty. Further, the EU’s High Representative gives the international community final veto power over the country’s tripartite presidency. It is obvious to most observers that this inefficient and corruption-rich system cannot exist indefinitely. In recent months politicians from all sides are protesting frequently about the untenability of the current arrangement as a challenge to their sovereignty (as an ethnic group, an entity or, rarely, as the whole nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina). Old tensions remain, there are divided cities where one ethnic group doesn’t cross an invisible line for lingering fears, real or imagined, of conflict.

I hope these images can communicate the tensions that remain in Bosnia with high unemployment, political stagnation, a looming economic catastrophe and a pessimistic outlook on the future. Old interests and battles, frozen in 1995, remain relevant for much of the population and distrust is high. How will this nation, and the international community, reform and reconstitute one of the world’s more clumsy attempts at nation building?

This is a strange project for me, and of course I’m thankful for all the positive reviews so far, but I can’t quite wrap my head around these pictures. Maybe its the ephemeral thesis, trying to capture this feeling I was talking about, and I’m not convinced the pictures are successful in that vein. Of course they’re also a bit too focused on the Muslim portions of Bosnia, where I was living and where most of my friends are, but the ‘idea’ remains. I look forward to your feedback, questions or suggestions.. I’d love a conversation here on Dva.

Many thanks are due to my friend Jasmin Brutus for hosting me in Sarajevo and Dado Ruvic (who I just wrote about here on Dva) for showing me around Zenica. Two wonderful men and photographers, thank you both!

Inauguration day will go down as one of the biggest, strangest and interesting days of my career. Woke up early, walked, waited, shot, waited, froze, shot then walk again. Edit for another few hours and then sleep.
Got to see Obama walk down the parade route, only an hour behind schedule and after many hours of waiting around. The lines to get in to the secure area were terrible, you’ll see pictures of people who had waited for many many more hours than I. It was a day of patience and just a little bit of reward. As I said in the post before this, I am very excited I was able to be in DC to make these pictures. The hardships all of us on the streets faced will soon be forgotten and the positive memories will remain. Selective memory of course, but we were there.

I think the enduring memory of this week for me will be these vendors who were selling all manor of Obama-themed crap on the streets of DC. The vendors’ personalities and the real (American consumerist derived) enthusiasm for their wares shown by almost all of the people on the streets really spoke to an underlying nature of the spectacle and self-awareness by participants in the ‘historic nature’ of their being there. This, I guess, provided the market for $1 “I was there!” bookmarks. I guess that I finish thinking that even though we were aware what we were making history and acted like it, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t still an honest, earnest thing.
Telling too was the day after. Here are a few pictures from Wednesday afternoon in DC … the cleanup, the happy crowds (much much happier than everywhere else before … a commenter on BagNewsNotes had it right. I think it was just too cold to smile, even though people knew the gravity of the moment around them and were truly excited about being there. Why else, really, would they have traveled a distance, gotten up so early only to wait in the deep cold for so long.) Wednesday, though, was all about the ‘new day’ weather. It was warmer, sunny. It created a different mood. Lighter, wonderful, relaxed. A sigh of relief and contentment after pomp and ceremony. Even the Police were smiling. Again, maybe this was just my reaction bleeding into the pictures (it happens for all photographers, journalists, storytellers) but that is the very point.



Thanks for looking everyone. Be sure to check out our partner BagNewsNotes for great analysis of these pictures and many more. Particularly, you must see my colleague Alan Chin’s work from DC called, appropriately, the First Draft of History. It gets to the heart of what his aims were in covering this. Well done Alan and Michael, thanks very much for the opportunity to work alongside you.

Sorry about the distinct slacking of posting here on Dva in the last week or two by both M. Scott and myself. He is on the road in China without easy access to the internet (not to mention he is better out shooting rather than blogging anyways) and I am in full-on crisis mode getting ready for a major change in my life. On January 16 I am leaving Seattle for New York and DC, to cover the inauguration and field meetings with all of the fine editors in the City, before heading to my new home of Belgrade in the first week of February. I have much more to share about this trip and this relocation, and I’ll be sure to write more here in the coming weeks, but first I must take care of all the massive to-do lists I have lying around… I’m sure you can understand.

Also stressful: Why is January 15th the deadline for all of the photo contests, grant and proposals I have on my calendar? As you can see on our Dvafoto Deadline Calendar (helpfully listed on the bottom-right corner of the site and available as a feed to go straight in to your calendar software) there is a lot coming due including POYi, World Press Photo, Days Japan and Px3 Paris. Get on your contest horse everyone and good luck! We’ll chat soon again.

(Oh, and if you are in New York or DC, or Belgrade/Prishtina, and want to meet up when I swing through I’d love to meet some of our readers. Especially if you’re an editor! Get in touch via email or the comments.)

On Wednesday I was the daily featured photographer on the Verve Photo: A New Breed of Documentary Photographers blog. I was interviewed some months ago so the info is a bit out of date, but it is still a nice honor.

They chose to feature an image from my project I See A Darkness, from the streets of New York. Read this piece I wrote for some background and philosophy behind the work. Or even the introduction to my as-yet-unpublished book written by my friend Claire.

Asked to describe the photo, this is what I had to say then:
“This picture was shot in November 2007 as part of my ongoing three-year project in New York City, called ‘I See A Darkness’, which is inspired by the music of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and the book ‘The Master and Margarita’ by Mikhail Bulgakov. The first pictures were shot in 2005 when I was an intern at Black Star photo agency. After that summer I realized I had a set of photos that I wanted to grow and have since made four trips back to work on this project. It’s about my reactions to the city and imaginary narratives between all the characters and places there. This photo was taken on the Staten Island ferry looking out at the Statue of Liberty. There has been a lot of reaction to this picture for political overtones, but I see it in the context of the alienation, distance and ‘mystery’ that I feel in so much of New York. While I do lots of documentary and photojournalism work, this project of street photography has some of my favorite pictures and is always a joy to work on.”

I’m very pleased to introduce you all to my friend, and source of inspiration, Djordje Jovanovic of Belgrade. I met him and his ‘crew’ in 2007 while studying abroad in the Balkans and from the very first beer we had I knew he was a special one. And not only because we had the very same taste in photographers and ideas on what photography should and can be, but because of his passion and ideas for how to push things forward in the otherwise stifling society of post-conflict, post-communist ex-Yugoslavia. Though he has recently put photography aside (makes me sad.. look at this work!) to pursue innovative and ground-breaking projects with his company XAOC Creative (the Serbian word, in Cyrillic, for Chaos) he still edits, designs and publishes the amazing XAOC Magazine, which has introduced me to countless interesting photographers from around the world. He was even so kind as to feature M. Scott in Issue 3 and Me in Issue 2. If you click on no other links for this post, check out these magazines.

Tell me a little about your city and your country
Belgrade is the capital of a small European country – Serbia. Serbia, in a recent history, was part of a larger country – a communist Yugoslavia. Now the country is in a process of transition and European integration. There are ongoing reforms in almost all state and social sectors . Belgrade is a vibrant city that has a tendency towards a group violence every few months. Interesting and loved city by many westerners and locals… known for cheep drinks, friendly people and beautiful girls ) bla bla
 
What did you go to school for?
I went to a High school for design – graphic design department, and just got my degree in computer arts and design at the academy of arts BK in Belgrade.

How did you decide to pursue this?
I really don’t remember but I guess that I like to draw when I was a kid and being a son of a photographer kind of pushed me into it… and I liked it.
 
What are you doing now?
Now I’m working on a creative and administrative processes in a company called Xaoc Creative that I started a year ago with two friends. Essentially it’s a creative center dealing with all kinds of visual communication. We’re mostly focused on graphic design for web and print, advanced web development and of course image production.

What changed between school, your first jobs as a photographer and where you are now?
A lot! Everything. My first full time job was in Serbian national news agency Tanjug. I was a kid just finished high school that suddenly was attending all the government and parliament sessions and traveling around the country and region with all the heads of state. It had a big impact on my process of thinking. Later on I started to work for Kurir daily newspaper simultaneously while working for Tanjug and studying. That brought even more fun to my life. Kurir is a tabloid, something like The sun in UK, so I was now in a even wider company of people, including entertainment and sport stars, criminals and a lot of very diverse ordinary folks with big problems. It was very interesting period, parliament session in the morning, gypsy settlement in poverty on the afternoon and VIP fashion show/party in the evening… that’s how my days looked like. . Later on I switched to Gazeta news paper and later to Hello! Magazine. During this four year period I was mainly interested in documentary photography. But I realized that photography is not enough for me anymore in terms of expression and impact. So I decided to start a company and put some more media in, some more people and more serious projects.
 
What did you enjoy about working as a photojournalist?
Process of creation was most enjoyable compared to the same process in other media. It was fast, simple and powerful.
Then of course the interaction with people and places that I was able to have working as a photojournalist.
“Photographing because I want to change the world and help people in need” is the line that we can hear from many big names in this business but I think it’s a big lie. I seriously doubt that anyone is photographing with that goal in mind.

Why did you leave photography?
Photography just don’t have big impact on society anymore. At least I think so. I wanted something with much bigger impact and that’s why we’re working with more media now. Also I wanted more control and more freedom and I felt that I could contribute more than I could as a photojournalist.
 

Tell me about Xaoc and your team.
Core team consist of tree man. Marko Kecman (Ed- Another terrific photographer and friend of mine.. check xaocphoto.com), Jovan Damjanovic and myself. We also have two developers, and two men that are dealing with photo production and a lot of contributors.

What kind of work are you doing?
A lot of web and print projects. In image production we are doing everything that a newspaper or a magazine would like us to do in a BtoB model. Fashion editorials, Products, reportages, interviews, campaigns… whatever you can think of… (Ed- Have a look at this project XAOC has done called Victims! of Serbian Politics. It combines nifty design, terrific photography and a social motive in an interesting and engaging way.)

Tell me about Xaoc Magazine. Who do you feature?
Xaoc magazine is a noncommercial free time project that has a potential for growth. We weren’t satisfied with the photo scene in Serbia so we felt the need to do something about it. Web magazine was the easiest way to do it… we’ve done only three issues for now, but had a nice feedback from people all over the world. Selection is based upon the aesthetics that we find interesting and that cant be found in a media scene in Belgrade… not in a mainstream at least. It’s internationally orientated but we always put at least one Serbian photographer in it.

What is the media scene in Serbia?
Rich and expanding. Quality I want comment on.
 
What kind of relationship do you have with the rest of the region (Balkans) and Europe?
Rich and expanding. Yes we do have a big problem here with visas, but we’re managing to overcome it. Other than that it’s fine. Balkans and Europe are rich in war history but I don’t find it to be an issue.
 
What are your goals for Xaoc? For yourself?
To expand our business internationally is the first next step. On a long run we want to contribute to an ongoing evolution for a better society. We’re living in a very interesting time now and not just in a last few decades or centuries but form the beginning of a mankind. We believe that humans are soon to evolve into much more powerful and peaceful beings and with great anticipation are looking into the future.
 
Any predictions for the Serbian, Balkan and worldwide media scenes?
For a serious answer a serious analysis is necessary but I’m not worried. I think that things are going In a positive direction and that we’re going to enjoy much richer and better media in the future.

Any links we need to see?
X Geek – Stuff you don’t know and Serbian photographer in New York Boogie. (ed- he is also the cover story in XAOC Magazine #2)

On a personal note, I cannot wait to be back in Belgrade; Djordje and the other guys from Xaoc know how to have a good time and still get up the next morning and work your butt off. And, I’ve just got to say, that opening picture is simply one of my favorite pictures from anyone anywhere.

I didn’t take any pictures for ‘work’ on Tuesday night, I took them for myself and friends to remember this moment. Maybe I’ll regret not doing more on this historic election night both as a citizen and as a journalist — on both accounts I kind of wish I were at the big street parties (possibly NSFW, it is a free-for-all Flickr group) in a different neighborhood of Seattle — but I had a great time watching the early returns on the computer and then watching the announcement and two speeches at a friends house with a bunch of other young people. A very memorable night.

What are your memories? Where are your pictures? Doesn’t matter where in the world you were, I’d love to see them. One of the most indelible impressions of this election is how (positively) interested the World is in this election. Hell, I was grilled about my choice in the Democratic Primary back in June by an Albanian taxi driver in Pristina, Kosovo that I could hardly communicate with: this thing is big and I want to see how you all experienced it. Post in the comments or send them to me via email and I’ll put them up.

Soundtrack: Death to Everyone by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. (links to weird YouTube video .. but you can hear the song. great song. big part of the Darkness pictures.)

Just found out that I’ve been named a Finalist for Critical Mass 2008 from Photolucida down in Portland, OR. I submitted eight pictures from my Kosovo projects.

Always nice to see the effort (and expense! I think $275 total for this review) are amounting to something. Now we wait to see if I’m voted (by this list of 200 or so jurors/reviewers) in to the ‘Top 50′, or even the top two or three who will have their books published by Photolucida. In the past two years, two photojournalists have won this top award: my comrade Donald Weber (expect a DVA interview with him soon!) and new Magnum nominee Peter van Agtmael.

Thanks are due to our friend Eric Kayne who was a tremendous help in editing down the work to the final 8. Be sure to check out the DVA interview with him if you haven’t seen it yet. Also, congrats to fellow young photog Matt Eich, the only other person that I know on the list of finalists.