V E B A H O O D

Montreal, 2008 © Velibor Božović

Simply, I miss street photography. You don’t need to read further then that first sentence.

For quite some time now, street photography has been excluded from the commercial galleries and all other established ways of art dissemination. On rare occasion, we get the opportunity to see some in museums but only from the masters of 4, 5, 6 decades ago (though I can’t remember the last time we even had that opportunity here in Montreal). In art schools, it seems, an attempt  to do a street photography project would make you fail the class, though I can’t confirm that with certainty since the last time a student dared to try was some 15 years ago.

The art and publishing world are interested only in photographs of preconceived ideas. Which is fine, screw them. But, could it be that in this age, with everyone being a photographer and with Google street view and security cameras everywhere and cameras in the sky, the life in our cities will remain undocumented? Perhaps not, there are many fine street photographers doing what they like to do, but I would be interested to know when is the last time a museum acquired a body of work from a contemporary street photographer.

Some future researchers interested in the subject, 30, 50, 100 years from now, will look in vain into a museum’s archives. There, they will find no photographs that show the life on our streets in a few decades at the beginning of 21st Century. But than, 50 years from now, there might be no museums either.

Havana, 2007 © Velibor Božović

No Cuba in the news today.

Sarajevo, BiH 2003 © Velibor Božović

Since the previous contest was a success, here is another one. Name the exact location in Sarajevo, either old or new street names, both are eligible, where this picture was taken, and you will get a nice print when I visit this summer (if you are in Sarajevo) or by mail if you live elsewhere.

Montréal, 2009 © Velibor Božović

My memory doesn’t serve me well. But, when looking over my contact sheets I can almost always recall the situation when I made the exposure, even if it’d happened years ago.

Few days ago I developed a few rolls of film that I shot earlier this year. The image above was a lonely one in the middle of the contact sheet and I can’t remember anything about it. Nothing prior or after this image gives any clues, as if a ghost photographer accompanied me on that day.

Chicago, 2002 © Velibor Božović

After all, it is a summer time.

Storm approaching Charlottesville, Virginia, during the Festival of the Photograph, 08 Jun 2007.

With all the storms hitting Montreal this summer I remember the big one during the first Festival of the Photograph, LOOK3, in Charlottesville, back in 2007. Lightstalkers gathered in The X Lounge when it all started. Later we all moved to warehouse IX. There was no way to stay dry. This is my only semi-successful capture of a lightning strike, ever.

Thunder, lightning strikes, rain, and rain again, flooded streets and basements and whole sections of highways; they occur almost daily here, it is not even interesting enough to get your camera and try to capture some.

Even if we thought that the last summer shitty weather was a fluke, after this one we have to face the fact that the climate is changing and, it seems to me, at great speed. We are in trouble.

Thunderstorm above the warehouse IX during the Festival of the Photograph, Charlottesville, Virginia, 08 Jun 2007.

Hoboken, NJ 2005 © Velibor Božović

From my archive… This is the set of images taken one hot afternoon, with one roll of film in my camera, while walking around Hoboken, New Jersey.

Sarajevo, BiH 2003 © Velibor Božović

It is a poetry day, while fighting the flu.

…

” In villages from which their childhoods came

Seeking Necessity, they had to been taught

Necessity by nature is the same,

No matter how or by whom it be sought.

The city, assumed no such belief,

But welcomed each as if he came alone,

The nature of Necessity like grief

Exactly corresponding to his own.

…”

from the poem The City by W. H. Auden