All posts by belgradephotomonth

BPM 2020/1: Minbizia – Olatz Vázquez

May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade

Curated by David Pujadó

Olatz is a photographer, a journalist, a woman, born in 1994 in Bilbao. Journalist by trade and photographer by necessity.
From the beginning she has based her work on her body, her soul, the woman who hides within her skin.
Her self portraits have a subtle delicacy, but also contain a sensuality worthy of photographers such as Edward Weston, the Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe, the work of Japanese photographer Masao Yamamoto and the simplicity and minimalism of Noel Oszvald.
Come 2020, her life and her work are knocked sideways from their natural flow and all that subtlety, delicacy, sensuality, simplicity and minimalism have been infused with an added hardness, a hardness that I can only imagine is like swallowing broken glass, something that could bring us closer to the work of the Norwegian Lene Marie Fossen. This work has a name, the first and last name being Cancer.

*Minbizia (Basque) – strong, intense pain; cancerWith the support by the Embassy of Spain in Serbia

www.olatzvazquez.com

The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: Gentle Vandalism – Miloš Tomić

May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade

I’m not a good photographer, but I notice scenes and moments all around me and I react without thinking – I photograph them.
More than photographing, I love chopping pictures, mostly photos from old magazines, turned now into paper collages.
Even more than photographing, I have been obsessively collecting old photographs for years.
Captured unusual situations, attractive, bizarre, photogenic faces, or a randomly recorded detail that should not have been in the picture.
Enchanted, I watched and piled those selected images for years and only recently, I started animating them.
I encouraged myself to destroy those images in order to make something new out of them.
Gentle Vandalism, so to speak.

The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: Within Cells Interlinked – Milan Marković

May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade

The topic of the interconnectedness between natural elements that are in the relation of correlation and causality has been present in my work, primarily as an examination of their duality. With this series of photographs however, I reject dualism for a state unity- where there is no longer any conflict because everything is complementary and comes together to form one new nature without conflicting sides. We are all linked in an eternal bond, which extends through all the things that have, and are still happening now, as well as all things that will, ahead of us. Not in war, but coming to harmony when coming together as complementary elements to make up the whole life cycle we know today.

At a point of unity, dualities cease to exist. Dual forces become complementary and work together for an unknown outcome that is exactly what nature wants it to be.
Every factor in the system of life is INTERLINKED.

INTERLINKED, we all and all together make complexity of Being,
INTERLINKED, inseparable from environment our lives are intertwined with one another.

The inspiration for the work came from the Within Cells Interlinked – Blade Runner 2049 test.

I can’t tell you how
I knew – but I did know that I had crossed
The border. Everything I loved was lost
But no aorta could report regret.
A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;
And blood-black nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: All Time is All Time – Ivan Blazhev

May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade

Dresden has had a long history as a capital and royal residence. At the end of WWII, in what history considers controversial bombing by the Allies, the city was devastated and the whole historic city center destroyed. After the war, it was reconstructed and restored to its original state.

My work is inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s book about the Dresden bombing, Slaughterhouse Five, and it’s themes about broken, non-linear time and fragility of memory. I see reflection of these themes in Dresden’s history of being rebuilt as an exact replica of what it used to be, thus from today’s perspective blurring the line of old and new, past and present, memory and the present. Using a digital pinhole camera to photograph the city, I create a parallel; problematising the medium itself and its authenticity, and directly revealing the paradoxicality of the new as old, thus purposefully emphasising the complex urban and architectural history of the city, completely destroyed, then reconstructed.

Instead of just showing the present, these photographs open a fissure to the past, the remains of a destroyed space, as living witnesses of the bombing. The photographs can be seen as memories and/or facts. I try to create photographs which capture the past in the present, as clues of parallel times and simultaneous events.

All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist…
It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another
one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

https://ivanblazhev.com/

The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: Antre/Antechamber/Antecâmara – Inês d´Orey

May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade

Curated by Ana Matos

Arvo Pärt’s violin and piano spawned, in 1978, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror), a melody for two instruments that gathers together simplicity, innocence and purity. It resembles an ascent, the coming together of the violin solo and the three piano notes; the composition becomes the sound of a guardian angel. In Pärt’s own words, he described the piece as returning home after being away. There are some images that bring us back to music, to the poetics of that supreme, universal and eternal art, because they touch us in our most intimate and hidden self. Inês d´Orey’s Antecâmara (Antechamber) takes us to that unspeakable world, where lexicon and symbols are of a different nature. They express the emptiness we feel in waiting, the search for our own angel like Pärt’s piano that, also as a mirror, can take us elsewhere, waiting in a suspended time and space. Occasionally the human presence indirectly becomes protagonist in these photos, the viewer is invited to wander through these narratives that are the composition of selected works from a number of different series by the artist, and where one can hear, at a distance, the lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes:

Oh I wish I could hear a nevermore
Saying life will be forever this way
The waiting is over
And in the spring I’ll hear
Someone calling out for me.

Ana Matos

This exhibition has been organised through the essential support of Camões, I.P that supports artist mobility, by which Portuguese artist Ines d’Orey is able to participate in Belgrade Photo Month Festival.

http://www.inesdorey.com/
http://salgadeiras.outsystemscloud.com/SiteSol/

The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: Made of Photos #2

May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade

October 1878, we can imagine a gentlemen’s club, a dimly lit room full of cigar and pipe smoke, a heated discussion can be heard that ends in a bet… when a horse is galloping… are the four hooves off the ground?

Leland Stanford, an American industrialist, and politician who also had an interest in breeding and racing horses, wanted to provide evidence of this theory and enlisted British photographer Eadweard Muybridge to shoot 12 photos of a horse in full gallop, a perfect sequence of the movement of the horse body. Leland Stanford won the bet as the photos showed that all four hooves were off the ground.

This extravagant bet in itself didn’t change the story of science, art or entertainment, but the resulting photos of that bet somehow mirrored what was also starting on the other side of the ocean in Europe. At this time Étienne-Jules Marey in France and Ottomar Anschütz in Germany were working on similar ideas and one year later the zoogyroscope appeared, an instrument for displaying moving pictures.

Nowadays, the possibilities are almost unlimited with what we can do with photos and moving images and who knows what technology will be available in the future. One thing we can be sure of is that artists will be squeezing all the possibilities out of it and demanding new ones.

Made of Photos #2 is comprised of a series of works in which photographers have experimented with the video format in order to present their photography work.

The second series includes projects by:
Grebo Gray – Michael J Sheehy, Judas Hour (Srbija/Serbia+UK)
Hélène Veilleux – Lava Tubes (Francuska/France)
Ivan Blazhev – All Time is all Time (Severna Makedonija/North Macedonia)
Jakub Wawrzak – Oasis (Poljska/Poland)
Miloš Nešić – Sateran u ćošak (Srbija/Serbia)
Momen Khaled Malkawi – 7 Mountains in Search of Home (Jordan)
Sylvain Granjon – Blakol (Francuska/France)

The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: Bucket List – Stephanie Pistel

May 8, 7 pm
Bioskop Balkan
Braće Jugovića 16, Belgrade

Sergei was VERY, VERY high up on my bucket list. For a long time…
He just seemed to be one of the most fascinating and talented people out there.
It took me over a year to ‘get’ him for an interview and high fashion special for the renowned Schön! Magazine.
We were supposed to shoot in Paris, which changed to London, then back to Paris and it finally got confirmed to take place in LA!
His agenda changed by the day…
In a stunning desert location, at 10 a.m. on January 9th, there he suddenly was.
He was friendly, shy and humble – but unbelievably captivating at the same time.
It was impossible to take a bad picture of Sergei. He had so many faces, so many emotions to share.
Highly intense in one second, introvert and beautifully absent in the next.
We had an amazing day with far too many fabulous images to choose from.
This is when our photographic journey started. Since then we’ve shot together in many places around the globe.
To be continued, my friend.

https://www.studiostephaniepistel.com/

The exhibition will run until 3rd June, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: Cruising for a Bruising – Dušan Kochol

May 8, 6 pm
Kuća Legata / Heritage House
Knez Mihailova 46, Belgrade

Brother, sometimes you get beaten up because you simply ask for it. Getting a testosterone thrill out of the emasculating pain and then wearing your marks proudly as war medals of phallic legion. Fed on the adoration all that you, my hero, can deliver is to bully yourself to unconsciousness, as the castrating eclipse occurs. The collection of black and blue maps is growing but the only road they show leads through your skin to the ugly side. Man up, shake off your ego erected goose bumps to make way for the pain to paint those bruises all over again.
www.dusankochol.com

With the support by the Embassy of Slovakia in Serbia

The exhibition will run until 22nd May, 2021

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: Heroes – Karoliina Paatos

May 8, 6 pm
Kuća Legata / Heritage House
Knez Mihailova 46, Belgrade

Curated by David Pujadó

It is odd in general for people, even for people that know rodeo, that when they hear about gay rodeo they’re perplexed because they are like…
what does that mean?
Chuck
I think the rodeo in itself is all-inclusive. It’s called the gay rodeo but
obviously one doesn’t have to be gay to compete.
Phil
I think what makes gay rodeo so different is that we help each other.
We’re a family.
Drew

The American West has been the home of many countercultures. Gay rodeo is one of them. Still marginal and little known, even among the gay community, it contradicts the prevailing idea of the cowboy, which does not include different roles or sexual identities. It was born out of discrimination in the 1970s but has become a chosen family for many who do not feel at home in regular rodeos and whose families still do not accept their sexual identities. The carnivalistic drag culture is an essential part of the gay rodeo and everyone is allowed to take part in any sport regardless of their gender.

This exhibition has been organised through the essential support of Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Finnish Cultural Fundation & Arts Promotion Center Finland that supports artist mobility, by which Finnish artist Karoliina Paatos is able to participate in Belgrade Photo Month Festival.

http://www.karoliinapaatos.com/

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h

BPM 2020/1: New Talents/Novi Talenti 2020

May 8, 6 pm
Kuća Legata / Heritage House
Knez Mihailova 46, Belgrade

This is the 5th edition of our New Talents Contest, supported once again by Nikon Serbia, who have been with us since the 1st edition of the festival.

As with previous years, we have endeavoured to select a very eclectic jury team with 5 members: Paulina Anna Galanciak – President of the TIFF Collective Foundation, co-creator of the TIFF Festival, cultural animator, curator and photographer, Mikiko Kikuta – Artistic director of Shiogama Photography Festival in Miyagi and Setouchi International Photography Festival, Takamatsu in Japan and European Eyes on Japan/ Japan Today photography project and curator of Sado Island Galaxy Art Festival, Director of exhibitions for Kanzan gallery in Tokyo, Francesc Fàbregues – Photographer, member of the Promotion Committee of the National Plan for Photography of the Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya and Formentera Fotografica Festival Director, W.M.Hunt – Hunt is a champion of photography: a collector, curator and consultant. He teaches and lectures. He was on the board of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and has been head judge twice and finally, Branimir Karanović – Photographer and Professor of Photography.

This year, for the first time, we include in our awards list a special award for the best local project (Serbian) that will also form part of our exhibition. The jury had the very difficult task of selecting the best 3 projects and the best local project from the 141 proposals (50 more than the last edition) that met the conditions to be part of the contest. Almost 60% of proposals were sent by women and 40% by men, with applications arriving from 32 different countries. The countries with the highest amount of proposals were Serbia (30%), Russia (22%), Italy (10%) and Brazil (5%).

For years, photography has never ceased to be the closest medium for us to expressing opinions, capturing reality, commenting on it and even transforming it according to our own rules. It is often a tool for expressing emotions – anger, discord, frustration, hope. It also continues to be a fascinating element of recording reality and a kind of chronicle of memory. It is everywhere and can be anything. And what is interesting – due to this universalism it does not lose strength, on the contrary – it still gains it, it is constantly updating itself to the latest realities.

That is why competitions for young photographers are so fascinating. They let you see the power of photography that is constantly reborn. It is an incessant current that thrills those who want to express, show, remember, forget, emphasise. Be heard. Thanks to it, we can witness the stories portrayed in the images, and at the same time see what is currently important for young people. What they are busy with, what bothers them and, going further – how their culture affects their perception of reality. They are interested, which is very natural, in themselves and the time of change, maturing and entering adulthood in which they are immersed. It often relates to topics of sexuality, family, relationships, emotionality, memory. Many of them also look more broadly – at their society, politics, ecology, the lifestyle we undertake or the impact of technology on it; some of them wonder where we are going and what the future brings us.

It is fascinating to see how young people use photography to give strength to their own voice. How they take on this visual form to show us their opinion. How they want to be heard, appreciated, noticed. How they search and are not satisfied with the casual answers. How mature they are in their approach to art, but also to life in general. I am very grateful for the courage and strength they have. And for photography, which allows them to get away from tight and specific words and name everything that is close and important to them in a different way.

Paulina Anna Galanciak
President of the TIFF Collective Foundation,
co-creator of the TIFF Festival, cultural animator, curator and photographer

1ST PLACE
ЛЮБОВЬ РАКШИНА
Ljubov Rakšina born 25th March, 1996, in Samara, Russia.
Studied at the photo school of Kristina Syrchikova at Victoria Gallery.
The main idea behind the photography is based on the theme of privacy: a diary, projects on the person’s inner experiences, family stories, and feminist projects.
Lives and works in Samara.
rakschina.ru

2ND PLACE
MAXIME MATTHYS
Maxime Matthys (born 1995, Belgium) is a visual artist working and living between Rennes and Paris. He is developing an artistic practice using photography, performance, videography and installation. His work focuses on the way technologies are affecting our daily life and are shifting our perception of reality. While exploring new forms of narrative, he keeps documenting the important issues that are shaping our future.
His work has been multi-awarded and exhibited in France, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, Malaysia, Korea, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Spain and published in various magazines and newspapers such as Le Monde, Libération, Fisheye Magazine, Polka Magazine, Médiapart, ArtInfo, etc.
His most recent work 2091: The Ministry of Privacy has won the Kaunas Photo Award in Lithuania and was exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, February 2020.
maximematthys.com

3RD PLACE
КРИСТИНА СЕРГЕЕВА
My name is Kristina Sergeeva and I was born on 4/2/1996 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. I have been creating photographs since my school years and from 2017 I have been photographing at a more professional level. I graduated from the Academy of Photography in 2019.
I am an independent artist and have participated in a number of group exhibitions in Russia. I have devoted most of my photographic work to working on individual projects based on memory, PTSD, archival photographs, childhood, and the study of space and place.
kristina-sergeeva.ru

BEST LOCAL PROJECT
NAĐA REPMAN
Nadja Repman was born on February 14th, 2002 in Sombor, Serbia, where she is currently graduating from high school. She is actively involved in photography and videography. She was the official photographer of the 27th Theater Marathon 2019 and the 2nd Sombor Film Fest. She has captured a large number of photographs at various concerts, festivals and workshops (including concerts of the Music School, Terminal fest, ecological workshops in nature Planeta, Krigla fest and the 40th Sombor half marathon). She is currently engaged as a freelance photographer at the Sombor National Theater. She is primarily focused on authorial projects in the field of diverse visual arts.
@nadja.repman

IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.

Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h