Childhood
by Zeljko Naic

These images were made during two years of therapy that I have prescribed myself, in order to release the tensions and deal with complexes haunting me since I was a child. My first memories are of colorful balloons that I was playing with and a black dog’s nose sniffing my face. I also remember a man in soldier’s uniform leaning over my cradle.

My father left us when I was eight years old. My mother, trying to bring food to the table, worked low-payed jobs long after her retirement. But she could not replace him in every respect. Many things I have learned the hard way, or have never learned. When I was sixteen, the war came. Society collapsed.

Once again I felt abandoned, this time by my fatherland. People suddenly became strangers, caring only about the barest survival. The first casualty was morality, and future became irrelevant. Not that I blame them, really. They didn’t know better.

Without proper guidance, without a role model youths can only do so much with their lives. And the accumulated incapacity of individuals to make significant progress can only form a retarded society. I need to further explore these problems on both my personal and societal levels, in order to find catharsis and be able to better bring up my own children.

Today we introduce a new feature, the Dvafoto Galleries. In addition to linking to photos we find around the world that we have decided to publish some of this work directly on Dvafoto, soon in a special section of the site. The first in this series is my good friend Zeljko Naic. His work stands out in the exciting Belgrade photo community because of how extremely personal and long-term his commitment is to the work. We hope you enjoy it and leave any reactions or comments below

Pause in our normal programming for a bit of an update on what I have been up to here in the Balkans. Lots has been going on and it seems like it will be continuing through the summer. And Scott and I have plenty of interesting things planned for dvafoto so keep tuned.

My long-term project about the relocation of Belgrade Roma “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” is currently featured in Lens Culture magazine. This project was also shortlisted by Anthropographia and was included in the exhibition at the New York Photography Festival and will continue to tour worldwide (a cool picture of the exhibition, snapped by a NY friend, is in the gallery above).

I’ve also published “Chapter Two” of this project on my Photoshelter Archive and included some images in the gallery above, so you can catch up on the project since my last post about the project on dva. I am continuing to photograph this story, following the families of the Gazela camp as they resettle around Serbia following the destruction of their community.

Lastly, thanks to friend Pete Brook at Prison Photography for writing about my work on this project in a post titled The Roma People: Matt Lutton building upon a legacy of wandering photographers.

I also have published on my archive a new gallery of work from Bosnia in an ongoing project called “This Time Tomorrow”. I will be following events in Bosnia closely as political and economic stagnation continues to slowly suffocate the country. Some tectonic shift will and must come to solve one of the world’s most entrenched political crises. Maybe tomorrow, but probably not.

I am currently focused on completing my book about Serbia in the aftermath of the Milosevic decade, titled “Only Unity”. My project was recently announced as one of seven nominees for the POYi Emerging Vision Incentive, a $10,000 grant for an emerging photographer. See some of the work and my (full) proposal at the POYi website. Congrats to the winner of the grant, James Chance and the other nominees.

I am also announcing for the first time publicly the existence of an tumblr sketchbook for this project: onlyunity.tumblr.com. Have a look if you want to follow me feel my way through this work. The latest news is that I’ve finished the first book dummy, which will serve as my university thesis, enabling me to finally graduate this year.

It has been a busy couple of months with a few interesting assignments, taking me from Budapest on a corporate job to a British international school in Belgrade for a UK newspaper. There is much to come this summer, including a trip to a Serbian winery connected to the royal family and projects to be featured in well known online publications. And of course focus on Dvafoto. I look forward to sharing this all soon, and I hope you are enjoying your summer (or winter, if you happen to be south of the equator).

My timing is great, I finally find a computer to use while my laptop is out of commission and I end up heading on the road immediately. Sorry again for my absence here over the last while, it has been rough going with internet and computer access since I’ve been back in Serbia. Big thanks to M Scott for keeping excellent thoughts and links going. I promise to work extra hard when I’m back in town with a working computer.

I am on my way to Sarajevo and other locales in Bosnia this weekend to continue my work on a project I began last year, called This Time Tomorrow, looking at the present stagnation and possible futures for Bosnia and Herzegovina. I’ll share the next installment when I am back in Belgrade.

But I’m not leaving you with nothing, as I will unveil the first installment of a long-awaited new section of dvafoto called the Book Club very soon and an interview with photographer Molly Landreth to follow. Stay tuned.

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!

A couple of months ago my friend Darko Stanimirović in Belgrade mentioned that he was hoping to organize some of his friends in town to create a Serbian street photography collective of sorts. Over the following weeks the groundwork for Belgrade Raw was developed through memorable nights full of Montenegrin wine and impassioned debates. I’m proud to present my friends’ efforts here and invite you to see some awesome work by six Belgrade photographers. I invited Darko to answer a few questions about the project:

What is Raw all about, who is involved, how do you know each other?
Well, one day I realized there are a couple of really good freelance street photographers in Belgrade. I especially admired how they capture those ordinary-extraordinary moments of Belgrade life. And they didn’t really care about using old films or front flash. I liked that rawness, it was way more honest and interesting than any boring touristic picture we can see all around. Not just in tourist guides, but basically everywhere – night-life/news magazines, websites, photo galleries etc. We’re all either Belgrade-born or we’ve been living here for long enough to know it shows nothing about Belgrade, but it’s all anyone can really get. So we’re here to try to change it, to show all those small & big things no one wants to publish, but things that really make this city.

We know each other mostly over some Internet forums and Flickr pools. One night in a park, drinking cheap but fine wine, I proposed this idea of a website that would showcase portfolios of some interesting Belgrade-based street photographers to Luka-Strika, one of our photographers. Over next few nights I designed simple layout and coded it in Wordpress. In some three weeks the whole crew was gathered and voila! It’s cool how everything was brought to life really quickly.

Why does the city and photo community need this group?
It’s not just that we as photographers “see” other side of our city. There is a whole community of people who’d love to see something really different and “honest”, without that ugly touristic taste in it. And I’m talking about both people living in Belgrade/Serbia and foreigners. You can learn much more about a city by looking at works of it’s street photographers, than looking at tourist guides or surfing the promo websites. And for the photographers themselves, Belgrade Raw is important because it gives them a context in which to work. It’s always easier to “fill-in” when you have that framework.

What is it about Belgrade that you are focusing on?
It’s hard to tell exactly what we focus on. In a joke, we usually say “that’s something for newspapers, not for Belgrade Raw.” That means we also publish photos which probably wouldn’t be published in traditional sensationalistic media. We like normal, ordinary people, personal stories and interpretations. Someone would think the city is too small for such a “focused” project, but it’s not. In fact, it’s incredible how many big and little stories are still waiting to be covered, while there are so many local newspapers, magazines, TV stations, websites…

Why street photography? Why this manner of photographing Belgrade?
Street photography is a concept that perfectly matches our idea of showing our own, honest view of Belgrade, because it involves photographers who “wander” all around, by day or night, covering everything that seems interesting or important. It’s the opposite of “beautiful sunny day panorama of Belgrade, commissioned by…” Also, street photographers are often freelancers, so you kinda get that true personal view. Speaking of Raw, we don’t care if a photograph was created using a cellphone camera, compact, film or digital. Prime or plastic lens. All we care about is strong personal storytelling. And if you look at the whole “industry” of documentary photography, that’s more or less the direction it takes.

What is next?
We’ve only just begun, but we do have plenty of ideas. Right now, it’s important for us to continue photographing our city, there’s so much more to show. But in the same time, we make plans for print too. We would also love to make some kind of cooperation with other photo-collectives, especially with those in the neighboring countries. There are also plans for guest photographers, so we’re not being limited to “Belgrade-born” or “Serbian” or such. (ed: check out the recap of a workshop with Donald Weber in Belgrade that members of Raw attended, and helped support, for an example of where this project might continue to grow).

And how does this reflect Belgrade/Serbia/Serbs?
For starters, we’re avoiding traditional cliches. But not the other extreme either (“we’re all beautiful, peaceful, awesome people”), so we’re trying to find the right balance. No, we’re not trying actually. We don’t even think about it much, I guess it just comes naturally. But about some other, deeper sync with Serbia/Serbs in general, we’ll have to wait.

The site is still developing and new projects are uploaded every week. One of my personal favorite series, and which sums up the Raw project so well, is “Wind” by Nemanja Knežević. A fresh, personal view of the city that is completely honest, and confounding to much of Serbia’s reputation. Great to see photographers, under their own motivation, creating their own work under their own voice, and finding ways to get it seen on their terms. I’m looking forward to spending more time with this crew when I’m back in Belgrade and maybe producing my own street work from town.
You can, and should, also follow these guys via Belgrade Raw’s Blog, their Flickr Feed, Twitter or become the 521st fan of theirs on Facebook.

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.

Here is part two of the list of things I’ve been reading the last few days week or more that I found interesting enough to share. This edition with more analysis!

First, this should be required reading daily: Foreign Policy’s Morning Brief post every morning on the Passport Blog. Yes, we get most of this from international newspaper front pages but here it is all together, and always has interesting and important updates to world stories that you just don’t see often anywhere else. More news breaks for me here than anywhere else..

There was a minor controversy this last week in Washington, for two reasons I guess. Washingtonian Magazine ran a cover that reused a wire (paparazzi?) image of Obama walking shirtless in Hawaii. So, I guess controversy for putting a shirtless President on the cover of a features magazine (with a tagline of “Reason #2: Our New Neighbor is Hot”, referring to the cover story of ‘26 reasons to love living living here’), but they also photoshopped his swimsuit to red (from black). The Huffington Post wrote about this in a post called Media Literacy 101: The Ethics of Photoshopping a Shirtless Obama and then PDN picked it up with Washingtonian’s Shirtless Obama Cover: You Call This a Scandal? which gives a complete rundown and argument. I agree that this isn’t something on the level of the Time OJ Simpson cover, and mostly just want to say that this all is very weird. Having a “hot President” is a new concept for me, and maybe this is an adjustment we’ll need to get used to. I am reminded of the deservedly-lauded New York Magazine cover of McCain and Obama on the beach, which is great. Finally last word: BagnewsNotes has the analysis on this cover-controversy along with December 08 analysis of the original photo when it came out.

And a little interlude/soundtrack for this post. My favorite Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy with a new song from his new album Beware… “I Am Goodbye”.

There is not that much more I can say more than I am impressed over and over again by the Burnetts’ amazing blog We’re Just Sayin’ which blends family, photography and general useful knowledge about living. Cheers to them.

Over at Burn Magazine there is an interesting and difficult essay playing by Jukka Onnela titled “A Kind of Error”. As Bob Black, who apparently curated this essay, says in the comments, “there are knods to Clarke and Richards and Moriyama and Peterson for sure, d’agata looms large too..” (sic)

One thing appears to be going right for photojournalism: Livebooks (which powers my site) announces a hosting plan for photojournalists (PDN story with the scoop) that is significantly cheaper than their normal sites. Direct link to Livebooks Photojournalism, which costs $44/mo all inclusive. A good plan for them I think, since their normal plans really aren’t priced for most budget minded photojournalists (in fact I know of at least one who dropped the service because of cost). Luckily I’m on the EDU plan..

In keeping with the breaking news, here is Andrew Sullivan’s ‘picture of the day’ for 4/26:

Along the same lines, the Serbian Government issued a press release on their English language website that announces that:

The statement adds that in order to establish existing capabilities and assess the necessary resources for a timely diagnosis of this disease in pigs, the Veterinary Directorate carried out a control of veterinary laboratories on April 25.
…
The Veterinary Directorate formed special teams for rooting out infectious diseases in animals, trained and equipped to dispose of diseased animals if the need arises.
…
Apart from a ban on the import of pigs and stricter veterinary inspection on borders, the Veterinary Directorate will examine the heath condition of pigs and poultry farmed in Serbia.

I appreciate the action Serbia, especially since I’m living here and will benefit from your preventative measures but I’m afraid you don’t quite understand that the issue is that the disease is infecting humans at present and is killing some of them.

Here is an interview on the Design Notes by Michael Surtees blog with the designer/creator of iPhone photography applications. I’ve only read part but it could be of interest. It also deals with the ‘nature’ of toy photography, and why Takayuki Fukatsu wanted to add this ‘ability’ to an expensive gadget like the iphone.

Daryl Lang at PDN takes a stand with his post Coverage of Dignified Transfers at Dover Dwindles when he says “doesn’t this seem cold? The lack of coverage at Dover ought to cause some soul-searching among assignment editors and, especially, TV producers.” While I’m very sympathetic to the power and importance of photographing events like this I do not see this as an issue. These transfers are being documented by the AP, with at least (for now) a photographer and a writer present. And frankly this ‘photo op’ (harsh) is not anywhere close to the real story and issue. That would be the combat death and the impact on families (ignoring for a moment the larger issue of the wars and their much larger ‘footprints’ overseas). Frankly I think it is odd to suggest that a full press retinue is as necessary for proper respect of a person, their death or the story of their death as an honor guard.

From Andy Levin’s blog 100eyes I was alerted to Kenneth Jarecke’s blog where he rants about modern photojournalism in a post titled “Lets Be Honest – Part 3″. It is roughly, as I can decipher, about taking ’style’ too far in photojournalism and what causes photographers to do it. Part 2 makes more sense but I still am inclined to disagree. His main point is that all of this “sizzle” added to images, good or bad images, weakens (cheapens?) them. I just want images to evoke something, say something, in however way the photographer wants to. All of us can and will react to the voice and ‘language’ that they’re using. I think Jarecke is confusing his dislike with a certain picture using a ‘technique’ with a whole swath of other things, ultimately generalizing about the photographer himself and a coming generation. Images can be good or bad, and yes they can be either because of the ’style’ put in to them. Just disagree with a particular picture or series, and let people experiment. It either works or it doesn’t, and as he says, the essence of photography is “I saw this. I found it interesting. What do you think?” . I do agree that people can be pushed in bad directions (over cooking images in photoshop or even setting up images) by the economics of the photo market (i.e. that is the crap that tends to get published, and sometimes rewarded). I feel it myself, we all do. We see the winners of World Press or what work is getting published and the thought ‘I gotta make work that looks like that’ crosses our minds. But it is each photographers’ choice to make and their decision to present their photographs in the way that they do. So I’ll reserve those judgments for each individual photographer and their work. Or maybe blame the editors.

Stephen Voss just posted some insane and striking images from abandoned schools in Detroit. Have a look.

Scott Strazzante has a touching post about optimism, his friends, mentors and layoffs in American newspapers on his blog Shooting From The Hip.

Speaking of newspapers (and layoffs) The Recovering Journalist has an interesting post about Inventing The Future in Iowa following the innovative exploits of The Gazette newspaper in Eastern Iowa. Interesting write up but frankly, after a few minutes poking around the website, I don’t see what is new or what the fuss is about.

Via The Click I saw this update about the ‘The Polaroid Kidd’ Mike Brodie on the Feature Shoot site. There are many more pictures and images from the 2007 exhibition on this page. I remember when these pictures first hit the ground a year or two ago, I think I saw them first in some sort of photo chain email. I loved them then and still do, very very much. So personal and really genius. Have a look, and remember he did it all with no training no fancy gear and at the age of 18. Kind of devastated me when I first heard that

Ok, one more slightly-wonkish Foreign Policy blog link: How NOT to dismantle the U.N. by Mark Leon Goldberg about issues within UN peacekeeping missions and accountability, and how this intrudes on the effectiveness of missions and local support. Very applicable, in my interest, to Kosovo and Bosnia of course.

Conscientious has one of his more interesting posts for me in a long while while highlighting Anna Shteynshleyger, specifically her intriguing work from Siberia and the sites of Gulags. It is made even better by this really interesting analysis/critique by Pete Brook at Prison Photography (which I hadn’t known till now, but is now rss’d). And here is the crux for me that Colberg teases out, which I’d love to explore later: “It indicates that there are no photographic conventions established, yet, for how to deal with the Gulag – which might reflect that the discussion (or actually amount of discussion) is still very much in flux. In fact, now that Russia has descended into a sort of authoritarian quasi-democracy, the Gulag there seems to be evolving into a non-topic…” . I don’t entirely agree, and neither would many in Russia I’d venture, but I too haven’t seen any photography that comes anywhere close to written accounts. My favorite of which is Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Imperium which I recommend with pleasure and passion.

A friend of mine sent me this very intriguing visual-blog (?) on the New York Times called And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman. I’ve only had the pleasure of reading her latest post May It Please The Court so far, but I look forward to reading back. Kalman also has a cool looking book.

I’ve seen everyone posting about the New York Times article about Danny Lyon and his two new books, but I two quotes struck me and bear repeating:
“You put a camera in my hand, I want to get close to people,” he said. “Not just physically close, emotionally close, all of it. It’s part of the process.” And, “It’s a very weird thing being a photographer.” Ooh, I agree.

Oh, and as evidence of my insanity and need to spike a few dozen of my rss feeds … this is what my computer looked like while I was preparing these posts…

Lastly, and I say this reluctantly, I am now on twitter. So join me if you want smaller versions of this kind of post and my musical ramblings.

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.