Happy new year and marry Christmas from Belgrade Raw

Photo: Milovan Milenković

Photo: Luka Knežević-Strika

Photo: Nemanja Knežević

Photo: Andrej Filev

When we were approached by Miroslav Karic, a curator from Belgrade’s Remont gallery, to be included in his selection of artists representing Serbia at the Donumenta Festival in Regensburg, we were intrigued and thankful for the opportunity. The huge space that is the hall of Donau Einkaufs Zentrum mall presented a challenge, since we had to find a way to fill the 250 square meters enclosed by the movable walls that constituted our exhibition space. We decided to use a large number of prints (presenting a main Belgrade Raw edit and also 5 more or less independent projects by each of us) and also to dedicate a part of the space to a slideshow room, where we presented constantly updated work from the Belgrade Raw flickr group pool.

We’d like to thank Regina Hellwig-Schmid and the whole Donumenta team for funding our production costs and helping set the exhibition just the way we hoped we would.

The exhibition itself was, in my opinion, a success, we had a lavish opening, with free cocktails all night and a varied buffet. It has to do something with the venue being a shopping mall. But when I thought about it, there is no downside, really, at least when you have in mind the type of work we were showing. We had a big, well lit space, with a huge amount of people passing by everyday, many of them stopping and taking a look, even before we finished setting up. Another interesting thing which I haven’t thought about much beforehand is that this wasn’t your usual “gallery audience”. They are regular people, and putting aside the fact that I haven’t been too happy to spend 3-4 days in the mall setting the whole thing up, I think it was a great opportunity for us to reach this sort of an audience and I was really happy for it. But, enough with the rant, here are some photos from the setup, opening, as well as of the actual exhibition and also expect to see a feature made of photos that Andrej and me made on our day-trip to Munich.

Veronika and Andrej setting up the wall with his project from Wien.

Andrej calculating for the setup of Darko’s project of Roma under the Gazela bridge.

An interestign ray on light on a photo from Luka’s series Suburbs.

The main Belgrade Raw room, featuring a gigantic print of Andrej’s photo of an angry dog in a car.

A wall in the main Belgrade Raw room.

A wall in the main Belgrade Raw room.

A curious observer in the Belgrade Raw room (before the setup was finished).

The projection room with the flickr pool.

The opening speech by the mall’s director

Crowd at the opening

Andrej’s series from a Tombola at a Serbian Community Center in Wien.

Nemanja’s India series.

Darko’s Roma series under the Gazela bridge

Milovan’s series “Beiden meets Belgrade”

Luka’s series “Suburbs”

A bunch of small prints that served as an invitation/peek to the projection room.

• We’re now officially registered as a Non-profit ogranisation.  We have a stamp and all. Hooray! Hopefully, this will give us more of a chance to realize some of the offline projects we’ve been thinking about for a while.
• We took part in a Fotoforum talk at Students’ city in Belgrade, where we had a nice talk with Ivan Petrović, who did an excellent job preparing the whole talk, the slideshow. It was a very novel and good experience for us and the audience seemed to enjoy it, too – there’s even a blog post (check it out, it’s in Serbian, but there are  also photos) by Dejan Danailov, a photographer/blogger based in Belgrade. You’ll see a couple of our snaps from that night below, too
• We are finally taking part in our first proper exhibition! (hopefully). We have been invited by a curator from “Remont” gallery, Miroslav Karić to participate in Donumenta, which is an art-show held every year in the German city of Regensburg,  where art of countries of the Danube region is presented. This year, it is focused on Serbia. We are all set to participate, but are still not sure if we will have the funding to produce our exhibition (we have been offered a huge 200 square meter space inside a mall there). If you now someone or a company that would like to help with this, please e-mail us at contact@belgraderaw.com

Here are a few photos from Fotoforum:

Nemanja, Darko and Andrej at Fotoforum, also a glimpse of an audience

Nemanja as a lead vocal, Darko and Andrej assisting

Nemanja, Miroslav Karic and Ivan Petrovic after the Fotoforum talk

We hope you enjoy the double photo-blog post bellow, and expect (a lot) more from us soon!

It was printed at home, plasticized and then we drilled holes, put in a couple of rings as binding and a chain to prevent people from taking it home with them. It is currently an edition of 1, but we hope to make more of them and spread around the city. If you are interested in having a Belgrade Raw book in your bar/pub/center, or know a patron that might be, don’t hesitate to contact us.

In any case, head out to Grad and check it out. We hope the chain will hold and it’ll still be there when you come.

photo: Nemanja Knežević

photo: Milovan Milenković

photo: Luka Knežević-Strika

photo: Milovan Milenković

photo: Nemanja Knežević

photo: Nemanja Knežević

photo: Luka Knežević-Strika

photo: Nemanja Knežević

photo: Milovan Milenković

photo: Darko Stanimirović

photo: Luka Knežević-Strika

photo: Nemanja Knežević

As a group, we had the pleasure of spending a week with the Wide Eyed photo collective from UK, but more on that from Darko next week, since I was (justifiably) absent.

I can say that there’s new things (and a revival of some old projects) in the works from Belgrade Raw, so stick around.

Photo: Darko Stanimirović

Photo: Luka Knežević-Strika

Photo: Nemanja Knežević

Photo: Andrej Filev

Photo: Milovan Milenković

Photo: Darko Stanimirović

Photo: Nemanja Knežević

Photo: Andrej Filev

Photo: Luka Knežević – Strika

Winston Churchill

The above series of photos was taken during training sessions of FBK Beograd, a floorball club from Belgrade.  Floorball is a quickly-developing sport and it basically is very much like ice-hockey, without the ice and with a ball instead of a puck. It is very popular in northern Europe and the number of people actively training it there has surpassed those training ice-hockey. In Serbia, it is still  a rather unpopular (or even unheard of) sport, but there is a national league with 4 clubs, all from Belgrade. Fbk Beograd finnished last this season but are passionately training and striving, if not for perfection, than at least for that 3rd place in their play-off match against Partizan.*

*this was true at the time of writing.  Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.