Famous Serbian Photographers – Zoran Petrović

The National Library “Vuk Karadžić” in Kragujevac awarded the Charter for the Book of the Year to Zoran Petrović for his Photo-monograph entitled “Kragujevac for Beginners and Indigenous Inhabitants”. The monograph was promoted at the Belgrade Book Fair in October last year, and in a few months’ time, it “conquered the world” – it is being read in New York, Moscow, Jakarta… On the front page of the book, there is the monument in Šumarice, and on the pages from the first to the last, there are all the recognizable ambiences of Kragujevac, recorded with a camera and the imagination of an artistic soul.

The Monograph by Zoran Petrović is not an official observation of Kragujevac prepared for the account of some institution, organization or party, nor was it prepared for the purpose of meeting tourists’ needs only.
Kragujevac for Beginners and Indigenous Inhabitants is actually intended for all, except those who are not interested in anything: it is also intended for the people of Kragujevac, particularly those who keep walking up and down their own city and who are so aware that they do know their own city and that they do not have to learn anything more about it. If they show a little bit of will and open their eyes, this book will show them some new faces of their own city.
(Vidosav Stevanović, an excerpt from the Foreword).  

One really goes through the book with admiration and enjoyment. All is in it – Šumarice, the Grammar School, the Old Assembly, the Theater, the Hippodrome, the churches, the winter, the summer, the famous Fiat cars, people…

The people are those who make the book realistic. For the major part, those are the details pulled from people’s lives, the real life photographs that are taken in a fraction of a second impossible to anticipate. Actually, the Monograph is divided into wholes, which again are so packed in together that they all tell one coherent story about the city and the life lived by the people who live in it from birth to death.
All the symbols of the city are presented, but they seem to be different from what we have got used to perceiving them. Those are not the pictures – postcards, although there are some of them, too, since in the past several years I have been taking such photographs as well due to the needs of my work at the City Tourism Organization, where I’m employed as a media photographer.

You succeeded in showing the two decades of the history of a city through 250 photos…

The photographs that I’d been taking for years tell their own story about the city, a visual history that is going on before our eyes easily, naturally, and free of any redundant particularities. Many photographs had been taken analogously, but for the occasion, they were processed so that there would not be any difference in their quality. I only used Photoshop when it was really necessary, i.e. that different techniques would not spoil the general impression. I took some photos from the plane; some from the hot air balloon, a couple of photos were taken by means of a drone where I wasn’t able to approach in any other way…
When I began to think about the monograph and select the photos that I had taken during the two decades of my work at the Beta Agency and the newspaper editorial offices of local and national journals, I came to the number of a couple of thousands… I couldn’t make a decision which ones to put and which ones not to put in the book. There were such a huge number of them: I had taken photos of different panoramas of the city and the surrounding areas, streets, squares, marketplaces, schools, events, celebrations – all the way to daily routine particularities. Everything is here, in the book, even now, and the final selection of the photographs was made by our famous photographer and artist Predrag Mihajlović Cile. Each photograph has its own story; actually, there must be a story in each one of them.

Some of the photos in the Monograph are very well-known, some have received awards?

This book was the way for me to celebrate my small jubilee, too – two decades of my work. I have had several exhibitions organized on my own, have worked for weeklies and dailies in the country, namely: Svet, Ekspres politika, Blic, Frankfurt News, Glas javnosti, and I have been cooperating with the Beta News Agency since the very establishment of this Photo Service. I have published two photo-monographs dedicated to Topola, the monograph The 50 Years of Knowledge, published by the Faculty of Economics in Kragujevac, have participated in the preparation and drafting of publications, have been delivered awards and acknowledgements at photo competitions…

At some time past, you have also been given the title of the Great Citizen of the City of Kragujevac?

Yes (laughs). I received this title in 2009, within the media campaign called A Day to Say – Thank You. The City of Kragujevac awarded this acknowledgement to me – as it reads: for everyday good mood, joyfulness in doing the work he is doing, the large number of true friends he has and also for the smile and the joy of life in our Kragujevac.

Rozana Sazdić