‘I TOOK PICS OF ROCKERS AND POLITICIANS AS IF WE WERE NEIGHBOURS’: Story of Goranka Matić, whose camera took shots EKV and ĐINĐIĆ

As life would have it, in her photographs she saved the greatest stars of the music New Wave in Yugoslavia for eternity. Her works are exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. According to her, people often get her name wrong, so she becomes either Gorjanka or Gorinka. Whatever the case may be, she will be remembered as one of the best-known women in the world of Serbian photojournalists

My first memories are of Ljubljana. I was visiting my parents, and I would have been around two or two and a half years of age. I remember a window overlooking a park. My dad would come back from work through there. When I’d see him, I’d quickly sit in his chair at the table and wait for the negotiations to start about who sits there. And so, I would visit my parents from time to time, or they would come to visit me, until we moved to Kumanovo, where I had to start school. My dad was in the military, and that was the reason we moved around a lot. To me, school was a nightmare, I cut classes, and the woman who used to work at our home couldn’t get me to settle down, so my mom quit her job and said, ‘I brought you to this world, and I’ll take you from it!’ And that marked the beginning of her education methods. I resigned myself to fate, studied, and suffered until uni.

My name and origin

I probably should have been called Gordana, but they called me Goranka, after the area of Gorski Kotar. My dad was a Serb from those parts, and my mom was born in Sremska Mitrovica, and her family tree branches out in all directions. Her father was a Russian who arrived from Russia on Wrangel's ships, and her mother was part Croatian, part Hungarian, and part German. I didn’t have many nicknames in my life, but they always get my name wrong – I’m often Gorjanka or Gorinka.

Expelled from the music school

I was an only child, feared of being spoiled, so there were rules to follow, or I’d be punished. I didn’t like to read – my mom was the one who made an effort for me to read or to have someone read out the mandatory children’s literature. As for Gorski Vijenac (The Mountain Wreath), I learnt it by heart even though it wasn’t part of the school reading list and none of them was from Montenegro originally. I guess she thought that she would teach me the basic virtues of integrity and courage through it. Dad had a great voice and played the guitar, but I was tone-deaf and had no sense of rhythm – they expelled me from the music school because I’d bring in frogs and avoided solfeggio. My parents never pushed me or directed me according to their own wishes. They started to let me go to the cinema fairly early on, which was a big thing. I’d bring a bottle of water and some candy, and wait for the film to start after the newsreel ended. Sometimes we’d go together – I remember Pop Ćira i Pop Spira (Priest Ćira and Priest Spira), our first colour film.

Kumanovo

Kumanovo was an ideal place to be growing up in and getting free of the fear of death. They’d be digging up something in our street, and they’d find an old graveyard, so we the children would take a skull or a thigh bone… Then we’d go to a school trip to Zebrnjak, where there was an ossuary for those who had died in the Battle of Kumanovo. It had been torn down by the Bulgarians during World War II, and the bones and skulls were scattered all around…

There was no need for my parents to teach me anything – they just had to let me gain experiences, which is what they did, probably imperceptibly overseeing my growing up.

Arrival in Belgrade

In 1961, we moved to Belgrade. We’d bought a car – a Yugoslavian Fiat 600, of course. I was already familiar with the city because we’d stay a couple of days at my aunt’s on our way to the seaside. But now I was supposed to live here. It was in September that the first Non-Aligned Movement convention was held, broadcast live on television, which I saw for the first time. I learnt the names of half of the presidents who participated. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the biggest challenge for me. We lived in Cetinjska Street, with my school nearby, and Radio Belgrade at the end of the street. Once I actually saw the singer Đorđe Marjanović! We’d had his records back in Kumanovo. But what gave me a lot of joy were roller skates, made from iron. I was roller-skating like an empress around the Bajloni marketplace, which was quite spacious, with few newsstands. And then – the cinema. Only this time it was called Balkan (The Balkans), with a cast-iron furnace that was so warm in winter.

Schooling

I was a “B” student at school, with half my grades being A’s and the other half D’s, which I improved towards the end of the school year. Changing schools didn’t bother me at all – I finished my elementary school in Vojvode Mišića Street at the Autokomanda. That was where my dad took me to listen to a speech by Aleksandar Ranković on a Sunday or perhaps Saturday. The entire square was filled with people. That was my first political rally in my life.

Kennedy

My prep school was called The Tenth Belgrade Preparatory School. To get to it, you had to walk through the Belgrade Hyde Park, which was full of exhibitionists, but somehow we weren’t scared of them – we recognized them. I was relatively reserved, a black uniform was mandatory, and I wore it with black knee-highs, and a black bag. When I was in the right mood, I’d put on a white collar. The French teacher called me “le corbeau” – ‘the raven’. I could stay out until 9pm, except when I went to the theatre. On that 22 August 1963, I did go to the theatre, and on my way back home I learnt on the bus that Kennedy had been killed. I knew about the hungry children in Biafra and a few other things, but killing a president!

1968.

I went dancing to Lazarac and a few other places a couple of times with some friends, but since I was tone-deaf and couldn’t dance, I gave up. And then 1968 rolled round. I was a high-school senior, and the university students were rebelling. I went to Studentski Trg (The Student Square) with my dad and felt sorry that I was in prep school. Then we went to the seaside, and on our way back we set up camp at the Jablanica Lake in Bosnia. I woke up early by accident and turned on the radio. I heard that the Russian had entered Czechoslovakia, woke up the whole campsite, and so we packed up and left. I remember the lines of cars on the road, the cars of our and Czech tourists. Dad went to report for duty, and Mom went with him, while I stayed in Privlaka with my grandparents. There was a mobilization centre there for that region, and people were leaving bicycles in our yard, the postal services were overloaded – it was a pre-war situation.

The university

Then, in September, it was time for me to decide what I would study, with microbiology, horticulture, and history of art in the mix. As that spring I attended the lectures on the Serbian medieval art at the Kolarac People's University, I decided to write my secondary school thesis on the medieval fresco painting of Serbia and Macedonia. Only a person lacking all awareness could take up such a pretentious topic. But it turned out good because that year there were no entrance exams due to the student unrest, and 3,000 applicants enrolled in our department. The numbers got smaller quickly, but I had a previous foundation of sorts. Now I was a big girl and was free, I went to lectures and took the exams early.

SKC (The Student Culture Centre)

Around that time, Bitef was founded in 1967 and Fest in 1971, so that was my opportunity to find my place in the world. I think that sometime around 1970 Biljana Tomić invited me to collaborate in the Bitef Visual Arts programme, and that was the first job that I got paid for. I bought my dad some shirt buttons, and my mom a compact, and the money was gone. Not only was the money gone, but also my focus shifted – from the medieval times to modern art. The SKC was opened a year later, so Milica Kraus told me to invite a couple more colleagues to get together there because the visual arts editorial team was being set up. We all came full of enthusiasm, and I think that was my second university. The state authorities gifted us the space and the funds, so it lasted for almost two decades. We were lucky to hang out together and have disciplinary crossovers – the visual arts, film, and theatre programmes, political debates, music, etc.

Galerija 45 (Gallery 45)

I had to move on, so when Galerija 45 appeared in Novi Beograd it was an opportunity to go fully independent. I was making programmes for a smaller community, which were diverse and successful, I think. I even organized Rock Block with Moma Rajin, which was a concert of fledgling rock bands, with over 3,000 people on a clearing in Apartment Block 45. That summer I travelled to France and Portugal believing that I was getting employed come fall. But – surprise! – the Director of the Novi Beograd Culture Centre gave the job to some candidate of his. Angry, I went to the Labour Court, but he said to me, “Goranka, you’ll lose this case, but you can do better things in life.” I was furious then, but now I’d thank him. And so I realized that that’s it when it came to history of art and that it was time for me to do a U-turn.

Photography

Thanks to the SKC, I had the freedom to transfer an idea to a photograph without the fear that I hadn’t hit the Golden Section or got right all the tonal values offered by the motif. Without ever being aware that I would become a photographer, when Tito died in 1980, I took pictures of shopwindows with Tito’s photograph in the products the store was selling. It looked a bit pagan to me, like gifts to the late president. I had money for two slides, I still didn’t know how to put the film into the camera, and the camera itself was my dad’s Canonet. Today, it is one of my best works.

In the fall, as I had no job, I spoke to my friend Branko Vukojević, the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Džuboks (Jukebox), asking him to start taking pictures of something. It was a music magazine, so I started to take pictures of concerts and so, without even knowing it, became the photographer of the New Wave. In the meantime, I learnt how to put a film into the camera, develop it, and almost everything else I needed. Most concerts and rehearsals took place at the SKC, where I felt I belonged. I knew some of the musicians from before – they were all young boys and girls, so there were no problems working together.

I later collaborated with the Start and Svijet (The World) magazines, based in Zagreb, in parallel. There, the photographs were printed very professionally on a single page or a double spread, and the author was signed. Those years seemed carefree, and we were thinking things would get better. In addition to the musicians, I often did interviews with cultural workers, and sometimes it even happened that I took pictures of the Bajina Bašta reversible hydroelectric power plant. Thanks to my camera, I could approach many places.

Album covers

My young musicians had grown up and were releasing records, so there I was – making album covers. The first one was for Odbrana I Poslednji Dani (The Defence and the Last Days) by the band Idoli. We had become friends in the meantime. We talked a lot about what the cover should look like. It was a deluxe cover, with an inside cover, published by Jugoton from Zagreb, and the letters were in the Cyrillic alphabet – a stylized font from the Miroslav Gospel. There were no computers at the time, or that font in the typeface sheets, so I had to go to Srboštampa, to do the typesetting there. The front page of the album cover is a detail of Saint Nicholas’s omophorion – an icon from the National Museum – and the back side also a detail of the golden background of the icon with all the cracks that time had left. The internal cover had the collective portraits of the Idols and their friends, and this is where I first showed my face, with pics made using coloured pencils, which turned out to be successful and popular. They have been bought by the Museum of Modern Art.

Zoran Cane Kostić and Milan Mladenović were my neighbours, so the collaboration took place at our homes. Koja was from Apartment Block 45 and, other than the SKC, we’d see each other on the bus. I met Bajaga on the trip to Vienna, when we went to the Rolling Stones concert. When he started his own band, I did some five albums for him. Pozitivna Geografija (The Positive Geography) was fun to do – we invited the cartoonist Željko Pahek to draw an imaginary geographical map on which we placed Bajaga in different poses.

So it all went on until 1990. Ante Marković became Prime Minister, and I went to China on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Miša Vasić had told me that a new weekly was to be founded in the fall, and that I could work there. OK, I said, I’d see, there was time.

From rock musicians to politicians

I came back from China and Russia full of impressions, and was supposed to become the photography editor at the Vreme (Time) magazine. I was quite afraid when I realized that it was predominantly a political magazine. I didn’t have a clue about politics. Denis Kuljiš consoled me saying that when he started at the Polet magazine, he knew nothing either and that I should relax. So I relaxed. And around me – journalism pros to the last one. Photo-documentation was weak, I was by myself, and all they wanted were some politicians. They said once, ‘We need a pic of Momir Bulatović.’ ‘Who’s that?’ Žarković said, ‘Montenegrin, young, politician, has a moustache.’ So I called up Tanjug and, wanting to help them, I rattled off what Žare had told me. I could hear laughter on the other end of the line, and in the editorial offices everyone was crying with laughter. Those were my beginnings in political journalism.

I got wiser and learnt fairly fast who was who other than Slobodan Milošević. Draško Gagović, one of the best reporters, joined us, and Jelena Mrđa came to documentation – we were a crew with the help of the other photographers in Belgrade. No one could do anything to me anymore. I’d get into the politicians’ offices with a journalist as if I was going over to my neighbour’s. The basic thing was not to be nervous and try to do good work. Rock musicians were teasing me that I had replaced them with politicians. Such times had come. It wasn’t just the politicians, it was the streets as well, and our country had fallen apart. I didn’t go to the war zone, but I did go out into the streets. Given that elections were always being held, I did some billboard pics through the marketing agencies in Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. It was a different sort of work, closer to doing album covers, and it went well – the money was good, whereas the newspaper salaries were low.

October 5th

October 5^th came. I was at an exhibition in Petersburg. On my way back, the people on the plane were reading papers, everyone was excited, and I heard in the streets of Belgrade that some were afraid of losing their jobs – it was very unpleasant. I had to make a publication about October 5^th – a photo-document similar to what we used to do during the 1996/1997 protest walks.

Vreme continued its work as before, without major financial help. Computers and cell phones appeared, and some agency guys had digital cameras. Everything was changing. I started to teach photojournalism at Political Sciences, to students of journalism, in parallel.

March 12th

On March 12^th, 2003, I was in class. Žarković called me on the phone, told me to cancel the class and come to the editorial offices, Đinđić had been killed. I passed through Nemanjina Street and saw throngs of crews in front of the Government building. The Prime Minister that I had known and worked with for years was killed. Šilerova Street was being demolished for days, the state of emergency was declared, everything was going downhill…

Politics, and then the RTS

Vreme was my first editorial team. I moved to Politika later on, where Ljilja Smajlović was Editor-in-Chief at the time. The daily’s appearance started to change, discreetly, with the design and the photographs in colour. I was experienced by that point, but not enough for such a big organism. I worked my fingers to the bone from the morning until the issue was completed, but out of sheer enthusiasm. Ljilja was relieved of her duty, and I managed to stay on for another year, and then moved to the RTS, where it was nicer. It was a different kind of media, where I tried to find my place, from using pics for shows to recording reporters for phone-ins, but without headphones – the smartphones weren’t around yet. Then I retired and taught some more at the Faculty of Culture and Media.

Departures of loved ones

Now I’m at an age when it is normal to say good-bye to my parents, who had lived a long life, and from friends who passed untimely due to an illness. Burials are part of my life, and there’s no sentimentality there – something that cannot be fixed has happened, and while they’re in my thoughts and in my photographs, they’re around somehow.

Life

It’s time to draw the bottom line. I think my life has been interesting and that, had I changed anything, it wouldn’t have been so. I’m content and, as Zdravko Čolić would put it, “I wouldn’t change a thing there.”

I’ve done something that, if climate change or wars don’t destroy it, will be part of our collective memory of a period when I was active as a photographer.

Kurir.rs/ Ljubomir Radanov