All posts by belgradephotomonth

Uncensored Books – Natasha Christia

gallery O3on

7th – 17th of April 2017.

Photobooks and installations by Valentina Abenavoli (Akina Books), Patricia Almeida (Ghost Editions), Francesco Amorosino (self-published), Julián Barón (KWY Ediciones), Lukas Birk (dummy-self- published), Lewis Bush (dummy-Brave Books), Brad Feuerhelm (Chaco Books), Amak Mahmoodian (ICVL Studio / RRB Publishing), Christof Nuessli (Cpress), Carlos Spottorno (Astiberri Ediciones), Europe: An Illustrated Introduction to Migrants and Refugees and Fictional Journal.

Photobook projects by: Patricia Almeida (Ghost Editions), Julián Barón (self-published / Editorial RM), Martín Bollati-Rigoberto Díaz Julián-Verónica Fieiras (Chaco Books), Brad Feuerhelm (Paralaxe Editions), Ben Helton (self-published),Edmund Clark (Here Press), Yannis Karpouzis (dummy), Daniel Mayrit (Phree / Riot Books), Christof Nuessli (Cpress), Elisabeth Tonnard (self-published), Jan Dirk Van Der Burg (self-published), and others.

“Uncensored Books” brings together a series of photobooks and installations that address in a critical way, through both their content and form, the production, uses / misuses, consumption and circulation of the Image today within dominant mass ideology’s narrative systems. By exploring new dissemination and audience engagement channels, many of its featured titles point to the potential role of photography and books can assume as activism tools. Many photographers employ recycling, appropriation and manipulation of existent images encountered on the Internet and social media, as a means of exploring new ways of storytelling, while addressing the political issues inherent in the circulation and use of images. Others perform and expose through their works the present uses of the Image as a tool of political and economical control amidst the contemporary media scape, placing special emphasis on the fundamental role of the viewer in the dissemination of the final
meaning.

The exhibition will be structured in the following five chapters:

Chapter 1: Manifestation of Decline < Archival Recollection of Symbols
Group 2: Grievance and Protest < Private and Public Secrets
Group 3: Identity Claim < Activating the Subject
Chapter 4: Dissemination and Participatory Modes < Towards a New Making
Chapter 5: A Further Index < Books and Collaborations

“Uncensored Books” is curated by Natasha Christia and dedicated to Lorenzo Tricoli.

Image credit:
© Amak Mahmoodian: Shenasnameh.

2 in 1 – Nenad Vilimanovic

Gallery Stara Kapetanija
The project idea is something like a “spontaneous” or “natural” diptych, or the diptych occurring in the initial process of creating photo and as such represents two completely separate frames in one shot on one photo (2 in 1).Diptych by definition represents two works of art that stand side by side, and although different, together act as a whole.Often, only one photo frame contains two plans – two frames which can stand quite equal as individual images that tell two stories, and yet they are together and form a whole.
Author intended that every photo has clearly visible demarcation lines of the two frames and right in the middle, so that each frame has a fully equal treatment in all respects. This allowes him to achieve the desired effect of diptych. Such photos can be cut in half and you get two photographs, and also more such photos can be added, to one another in an endless sequence.
All photos were taken during 2016 in the urban environment.

H. said he loved us – Tommaso Tanini

Instituto de Italiano di Cultura Belgrado

4th – 25th of April 2017.

Exhibition curated by Natasha Christia

TommasoTanini’s H. said he loved us draws on the story of the GDR and the German Ministry for State Security (STASI) to explore the feelings of oppression and dread caused by living in a state of constant suspicion and diffidence. Following three years of travels and investigations in Germany, the project mingles archival and documentary research with a personal and subjective photographic investigation stepped on literary references and fictional narratives. An elegantly oppressive allegory of authoritarianism and domination, H. said he loved us was originally inspired by Corrado Alvaro’s dystopic novel “L’Uomo è Forte”. Published back in 1938, the book was a ferocious critique towards totalitarianism and its abuses of paranoia and instilled fear to control the masses.

The images of H. said he loved us are immersed in a world devoid of names and references. Portraits of five Stasi victims (all betrayed by people they trusted and loved, family members and friends), alongside anonymous corners and trivial details of East Germany cityscapes generate an unresolved tension between the act of spying and being spied upon. These pictures, partly cinematic and partly forensic, resonate with the sense of unease that pervades Alvaro’s book. They become a sinister background of the documentary material recollected by Tanini and enigmatic
monuments echoing the feelings of the people he encountered during his research. Emerging from this austere landscape as a loose, anonymous patchwork of documents, autobiographical notes, found images and portraits, the stories of the STASI victims are reactivated as fragmented albeit vivid and interactive accounts.Structured as a rich mosaic of traces and suggestions, H. said he loved us subtly warns us about the cyclical and evil nature of any form of totalitarianism, without imposing any unilateral vision or clichés. At the same time, it brings onto the surface the ghosts of a dreadful historical reality that has ruled GDR and not only – a reality that has been deliberately excluded from the founding myths of the post Cold-War Era European unity.

Prayer – Milo Sladakovic

Gallery Bozidarac – 1947

3rd – 17th of April 2017.

Prayer

Public space as sacred space and interstice so elusive that sometimes its understanding and description depends only in the eye of the observer and the means we use to describe it.

This photo series was two years in the making, during the months of Ramadan, in the hot and humid Deira, oldest part of modern city of Dubai (UAE).

In its own stubborn way, Deira refuses to change, both visually and emotionally. While Dubai is constantly changing and unstoppably growing, Deira is forever squeezed between a Creek on one side, and other parts of the city and a massive airport from the other side. Creek, a main Dubai port for years is now a shadow of what it once was and used only as a local transport and tourist hub. It seems that Deira and its population are not attuned nor interested in what’s going on in the rest of this hectic city.

Info about multimedia project Book of Deira find on the link below:

http://www.barenova.com/docs/street-prayer/

 

More than journalism – Goran Zlatkovic

Gallery SKC New Belgrade

3rd – 7th of April 2017.

Goran Zlatkovic was born in 1972 in Belgrade, where he lives and works. He is Graduate Economist, who is now on senior year master academic studies in visual arts – photography at the European University, the New Academy of Arts in Belgrade in the class of Professor Dr. Milan Aleksic. Photographer of the magazine „Diplomacy&Commerce“ , PR of the agency Color Press Group (CMC), associate photographer magazine „Gloria“ and „Lepota i zdravlje“. Zlatkovic is photographer for Embassy of Canada, Brasil,Argentina, Belgium and Lebanon in Belgrade, Belgrade Jeunesses Musicales, Music school „Josip Slavenski“, Basketball club „Radnicki“, „Pompea“ (Italy). He participated in several group exhibitions in Belgrade and in the gallery Student Cultural Center Kragujevac. Exhibition „More than journalism“ consists of photographs from the diplomatic receptions, taken during the period from Jun 2016 to January 2017. The artist's need to see people and events through his eyes, to rise above formalities and patterns, resulted in photographs that represent something new, different in the world of journalism in our region. It seems that photojournalism reinforces power with new elements, slick, spontaneity and certainly the courage.

BEAUTY & the BEAST / Ljubisa Tesic

Gallery Tower on Gardos, Zemun
from 1 April to 18 April 2017

The very title of Beauty and the Beast is recognized as a source of contrast. A
woman body seen eye Ljubiša Tešić represents and expresses the beauty of women
as eternal inspiration in many aspects and on the other hand it also shows the woman
body through the exercising of professional boxing. Throughout the exhibition of 24
photographs, 30×40 cm, rotate and compete and compare, the beauty of women
and aggression, expressed through sport that model, Ana Nikolic professionally
engaged.

Trapped / Igor Coko

Gallery Eurocentar

1st of April – 13th of April

author: Igor Coko

 

Story on refugees from Afghanistan, trapped in Belgrade, on their way to European Union. Due to the closed borders they endure in very bad conditions, at the streets and in a warehouse on the place of the future Belgrade Waterfront … With the first snow, their situation became very critical….…