A photography festival is the perfect place to discover new photographers, fresh projects, and to meet people who are just as obsessed with photography as you are. It’s a place to make contacts, show your work, or talk about the organisation you represent—yes, even that one with the long name no one remembers.
It’s also a place for lectures, talks, presentations, and masterclasses. Many of these things happen in galleries, in comfy chairs, or even over lunch or dinner—because why not mix business with a bit of pleasure? At our festival, every minute is a chance to work and enjoy. That’s our little superpower.
A festival is, after all, a celebration. And while we usually wrap up the month with a big party for those still in Belgrade, this year we thought—why not flip the script? Let’s start with a party! So, the night after opening BPM 2025, on the 8th of May from 21h, we’ll be celebrating our new edition at Idiott Bar (Dalmatinska 13, Belgrade). Our Director, David Pujado, will be DJing a wild mix from La Movida Madrileña.
We warmly invite everyone to join us—come for the music, stay for the madness!
Festival fotografije je savršeno mesto da otkriješ nove fotografe, sveže projekte i da upoznaš ljude koji su isto tako zaluđeni fotografijom kao ti. Mesto gde možeš da stekneš kontakte, pokažeš svoj rad ili pričaš o organizaciji koju predstavljaš — čak i ako joj niko ne zna pun naziv.
Tu su i predavanja, razgovori, prezentacije i masterklasovi. Mnogo toga se dešava po galerijama, dok sediš u udobnoj fotelji, tokom ručka ili večere — jer zašto ne spojiti posao i zadovoljstvo? Kod nas je svaki minut prilika i za rad i za uživanje. To nam dođe kao supermoć.
Festival je, na kraju krajeva, slavlje. I dok smo do sada obično zatvarali mesec žurkom za sve koji su još u Beogradu, ove godine smo odlučili da okrenemo stvar — zašto da ne počnemo sa žurkom?
Zato ćemo veče nakon otvaranja BPM 2025, 8. maja od 21h, proslaviti novo izdanje festivala u baru Idiott (Dalmatinska 13, Beograd). Naš direktor, David Pujado, biće za DJ pultom i vrteće hitove iz La Movida Madrileña.
Pozivamo sve da nam se pridruže — dođite zbog muzike, ostanite zbog ludila!
From Italy to Sweden, from Romania to Portugal: In recent months, portraits of nearly 100 victims of child abuse have been collected throughout Europe. Never has the dimension of the problem been captured in this way. Photos and videos from award-winning journalist Simone Padovani documenting
the injustices now give the victims a voice. The “SHAME – European Stories” exhibition is a traveling exhibition that has been presented across Europe, bringing to light the stories of those who have survived abuse. To date, it has been on show in more than 15 European cities and has also been hosted at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Belgrade Month of Photography now integrates Belgrade into this significant initiative.
The objectives of this exhibition are to raise awareness, to promote legislative changes, to break the silence, the stigmatisation, the impunity, the cover-up and even the complicity. The exhibition is organised by the Guido Fluri Foundation (Switzerland) and Justice Initiative, featuring the
photography and videos of Simone Padovani.
Simone Padovani is an award-winning Italian photojournalist contributing to international agencies such as Getty Images and Universal Pictures. His work has been published in globally recognized media outlets, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Focus,
among others.
simonepadovani.it • @simonpadovani • justice-initiative.eu/exhibition
Tue – Fri 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun 12 – 15h
Od Italije do Švedske, od Rumunije do Portugala: Tokom proteklih meseci širom Evrope prikupljeni su portreti gotovo stotinu žrtava zlostavljanja dece. Dimenzija ovog problema nikada nije bila sagledana na ovaj način. Fotografije i video snimci nagrađivanog fotoreportera Simonea Padovanija, koji dokumentuju nepravdu, sada daju glas žrtvama. Izložba SHAME – European Stories je putujuća izložba koja obilazi celu Evropu kako bi širila priče onih koji su preživeli zlostavljanje. Do sada je prikazana u više od 15 gradova Evrope a gostovala je i u Savetu Evrope u Strazburu. Beogradski mesec fotografije sada stavlja i Beograd na ovu mapu.
Ciljevi ove izložbe su podizanje svesti, podsticanje zakonskih promena, razbijanje tišine, stigmatizacije, nekažnjivosti, zataškavanja i čak saučesništva. Izložbu organizuje Guido Fluri Fondacija (Švajcarska) kroz svoj ogranak Justice Initiative, uz fotografije i videe Simonea Padovanija.
Simone Padovani je italijanski fotoreporter koji radi za međunarodne agencije kao što su Getty Images i Universal Pictures. Njegove slike objavljene su u međunarodnim časopisima poput The New York Times, National Geographic, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Focus i drugih.
simonepadovani.it • @simonpadovani • justice-initiative.eu/exhibition
uto – pet 14 – 19h
sub – ned 12 – 15h
With her photography series In Passing, artist Katarina Marković immerses us in a profoundly emotional state—a state of melancholic longing. In her works, we sense the transience of time and the complexity of situations and emotions that lie behind the beauty captured.
Katarina’s photographs, a nostalgic ode to the intimacy of life, connect us to moments from the past in a way that awakens a desire to relive them. The exhibition consists of three central events, structured as three segments forming a continuous narrative, unfolding seemingly in the same place and at the same time.
Marković’s masterful use of vivid colours and details as narrative elements is what defines and distinguishes her work. Through such an expressive articulation of sentiment, we sense that the moments captured—though fleeting—are decisive for the imagined protagonists. We feel as though we are witnessing formative moments, gestures, and impulses through which significant decisions are made.
The In Passing series, created as part of this project, is also characterised by elements of distortion, a play with lighting and sharpness. Through this approach, the artist strips the recorded sequences down to their bare impulses, leaving their ultimate truth concealed.
With In Passing, Katarina steps beyond the boundaries of the visual, introducing a new element—poetry. Her verses are tender, profound, and personal. They explore emotions of love, passion, and vulnerability, serving as a reflection of the world around her—the world we ourselves now inhabit. These original verses enhance the experience of the vivid scenes composed of carefully selected frames, conveying an intense yearning for something perhaps just beyond reach.
Whether we see in this fantasy of the conscious and unconscious a body, fear, love, or desire, one thing is certain—the compositions before us are defined by movement, making it one of the central themes to observe. Movement, as change, transience, and growth, ultimately becomes the very thing the artist confronts us with, liberating us from feelings of emptiness and helplessness.
Sofija Vučeta Posavec
This exhibition was part of our partner festival, the Sarajevo Photography Festival.
ketmarkovic.com • @keticatt
Tue – Sun 12 – 20h
tajina, noun
1. a landscape containing an attribute
[in Czech, the word tajina rhymes with the word krajina
which translates to landscape; the word base taj means a mystery]
2. sacrament; a ceremony that conveys an invisible grace
through a visible symbol [Orthodox Church]
“In 1921, a woman from South Bohemia started a diary about motherhood, and in 2021 I am continuing this diary. I think about the fact that my father’s grandmother also came from South Bohemia. I know her only from photographs and stories, yet I feel affection for her.”
The Tajina series invites us to discover the essence of the mystery, and to experience it in everyday life. It draws connections between the lives of our ancestors, their imprints in our present and their role in shaping our future. The depicted scenes are intimately connected to memory and the constant passage of time – human time appears to be rushed compared to the time of the landscape. Although rocks and stones may appear solid
and unchanging to us, they are persistently sculpted by wind, water or ice.
“Things around us change their forms, time overlaps. We are constantly standing on the borderline, and this is the moment when something opens up before us: the invisible becomes visible and disappears again.”
Text edited by Dáša Husárová.
Thanks to the Ceski Centar Beograd for their support with the exhibition and for making it possible for her to be here. We would also like to mention that this exhibition was part of our festival’s friends: Off Bratislava and Grenze Arsenali Fotografici.
martinahavlova.com • @jedenactyostrov
Tue – Sun 12 – 20h
The works from this cycle are an elaboration of the photo collage process, but also the shaping of reality through the subconscious and thus all the images we carry as archetypal heritage. It is obvious that all of the fusion, relations as well as the process, both of perception and knowledge takes place in the neural center. Spatial plans are the result of a previously generated impulse that leads to an unexpected outcome. They are the
centers of diverse conflicts. The brain, according to the definition from the age of enlightenment, is the “organ of the soul” and it interweaves the secrets of life. The immediate experience as well as the conflict of what circulates around our consciousness changes through neurotransmission into a different order.
The changed spaces in these photographic outcomes can be compared to stations, rooms and intersections. They are the composition of a struggle between archived images of the past and the sense of our imaginings. For me, photography is first and foremost a space for new content that is not just a mechanical imprint of reality. Between the moment of perception and the final outcome in the work I engage process of re-photographing,
deconstructing and unexpected layering.
I am using photo transfer of collage as a procedure that introduces unpredictable mistakes and moments of life’s spontaneity. This opens the way to depart from the perfect, multiplied image and its triviality.
@calic.maria
Tue – Sun 12 – 20h
KOURTNEY ROY
I Drink – New Orleans
Kustos/Curated by David Pujado
The series is implacable: one image is all and can be reduced to a fragment. The avatar takes precedence in a unique, unchanging narrative, where the stereotype reigns. Kourtney Roy,
photographer, actress and director makes a body, her own, available for a range of little sketches, the backdrop of which is always desolate or banal, places where bad things happen.
We are in New Orleans, a city that has not yet managed to get over Katrina, with its grim neighbourhoods, service stations and bars. Wearing a “disguise’,’ with no ostentation, a nameless character in a ‘mask’: features in them, or in fact, lives in them. ‘The bar, the karaoke stage or dancefloor house an accepted solitude that family life cannot assuage. Nevertheless, there is purposefully no pathos in the depiction. The “mask” is an obvious lure, and despite changing wigs, the modifications have no effect on the way the narra-tive unfolds, it is necessarily brutal, a lost woman in a counterfeit, illusory world.
What is the aim of this transformation? The provisional modification is intended to create an encounter with one of her potential doubles. The photographer and her character are looking for each other. Here photography reaches its aim: here, without a doubt, they find one another, they identify each other. In the framework of this piece of photographic fiction, the change in appearance is essential, obvious and tragically comic.
But the photographer does not fool us with these kitsch backdrops; of these preposterous wigs and this low-key eroticism there is nothing left but ennui and banality. We do not expect anything else, anything more off-putting, as the photographer, perhaps through empathy, pushes us to act, to put ourselves in the place off the character, the everyday neurotic” that inhabits us all. The title, “I Drink’,’ is evidence of the character s refusal to look at reality head-on, the subject that struggles to find its place in the world of language. Faced with the overdose of the world’s meanings, emptiness is the only option. Everyday life is a used-up photographic material that can no longer be approached without an ironic lightness.
The illusion contributes to the balance. The artificial nature of photography is but the metaphor of the artificiality of existence. These images are not here merely to confound or amuse the viewer. They relate the viewer to the work of the imagination, which, in the end, is the medium’s sole function.
-text by Francois Cheval, Co-director of Lianzhou Museum of Photography
kourtneyroy.com • @kourtneyroy
Tue – Sun 12 – 20h
KOURTNEY ROY
I Drink – New Orleans
Kustos/Curated by David Pujado
Serija je neumoljiva: jedna slika je sve i može se svesti na fragment. Avatar ima prednost u jedinstvenoj, nepromenjivoj naraciji, u kojoj vlada stereotip. Kortni Roj, fotografkinja, glumica i rediteljka, stavlja svoje telo na raspolaganje za niz malih skečeva, čija je pozadina uvek pusta ili banalna – mesta gdje se događaju loše stvari.
Nalazimo se u Nju Orleansu, gradu koji se još uvijek nije oporavio od uragana Katrina, sa sumornim četvrtima, benzinskim pumpama i barovima. U „prerušavanju“, bez ikakve pompe, pojavljuje se bezimeni lik, „maska“, ili bolje rečeno, on u njima živi. Bar, karaoke bina ili plesni podijum su utočišta prihvaćene samoće koju porodični život ne može da ublaži. Ipak, namerno nema patosa u prikazu. „Maska“ je očigledna varka i uprkos promeni perika, modifikacije ne utiču na tok naracije , ona je nužno surova, izgubljena žena u lažnom, iluzornom svetu.
Koji je cilj ove transformacije? Privremena modifikacija ima za svrhu susret s jednim od njenih mogućih dvojnika. Fotografkinja i njen lik traže jedno drugo. Ovde fotografija dostiže svoj cilj: nesumnjivo, oni se pronalaze i identifikuju jedno s drugim. U okviru ovog fotografskog fikcionog dela, promena izgleda je suštinska, očigledna i tragično komična.
Ali fotografkinja nas ne zavarava ovim kičastim pozadinama; od ovih apsurdnih perika i ovog suptilnog erotizma ostaju samo dosada i banalnost. Ne očekujemo ništa drugo, ništa uznemirujuće, jer nas fotografkinja, možda iz empatije, podstiče da delujemo, da se stavimo u poziciju lika, svakodnevnog neurotika koji u nama svima prebiva. Naslov I Drink svjedoči o likovom odbijanju da se suoči sa stvarnošću, o subjektu koji se bori da pronađe svoje mesto u svetu jezika. Suočeni s predoziranjem značenja sveta, praznina je jedina opcija. Svakodnevni život je iscrpljen fotografski materijal, koji se više ne može obraditi bez ironične lakoće.
Iluzija doprinosi ravnoteži. Veštačka priroda fotografije samo je metafora veštačke prirode postojanja. Ove slike nisu tu samo da bi zbunile ili zabavile posmatrača. One ga povezuju s radom imaginacije, koji je, na kraju krajeva, jedina funkcija ovog medija.
Tekst: Fransoa Ševal, kourednik Lianzhou muzeja fotografije
uto – ned 12 – 20h
BRAGI ÞÓR JÓSEFSSON
Odbrambene snage Islanda • Iceland Defense Force
Curated by David Pujado
American soldiers first came to Iceland in 1941, before the United States declared war on Germany and Japan, and constructed the headquarters for their military activity at a barren and desolate location in the southwest corner of the country. The base was one of hundreds of such bases that the Americans established all over the world during the Cold War. For 55 years, from 1951 until 2006, the base at Keflavik was one of the American army’s most important North Atlantic bases. However, following the end
of the Cold War, the United States’ new foreign affairs policies made the base unnecessary and the base was abandoned.
The photographer Bragi Þór Jósefsson visited the deserted town shortly after the Americans left and just before Icelanders started to renovate it for their own needs. The buildings had fulfilled their original purposes, but it was as if they were still waiting for their former owners to return. Traces of these inhabitants had all but disappeared, and the future of the town was still undecided. It was a strange sight; An American town, complete with supermarkets, a hospital, football field and a cinema, standing and awaiting its destiny on a desolute icelandic moor.
bragi.is • @bragithor_photo
Tue – Sun 12 – 20h
* Galleries and exhibition spaces retain the right to change the date and time of the exhibitions and other events