The Goranka Matić monograph as a testament to an era, Belgrade’s New Wave and a society in upheaval

There is a well known line by Goranka Matić that, in my view, captures her life and work better than anything else. It goes like this: I am a photographer of everything and anything. Everything that could be photographed, I photographed, except amoebas. Iconic images of Bajaga, Vlada Divljan, Margita Stefanović, EKV, Koja, Gile, Bora Pekić, Marina Abramović, Živojin Pavlović, Aca Popović, Makavejev, Šijan, Tom Gotovac, Vukica Đilas, Sonja Savić, Mira Karanović, members of Idoli, and Wim Wenders have become an inseparable part of her remarkable career. Everyone has their own memories and interpretations, yet it is hard to forget a photograph of hers once you have seen it. Through decades of dedicated work, Goranka Matić created an archive of immense value, a record of the people, the era and the spaces in which she worked.

The importance of that body of work will only become clearer in the years ahead. Her photographs reflect today’s generations and will guide future ones as they learn about the world she captured. Her approach to photography moves between the intimate and the socially aware and committed, and her relationship to the act of taking a photograph was always sincere and deeply felt. You can sense that from the very first glance. These are images one returns to, and each time something new reveals itself. It is precisely this layered quality that showed me their true power. The photographs of Goranka Matić shift along with time, or perhaps only with us, which is why every renewed look lends them a new meaning.

Cover of the Goranka Matić monograph, 2025.

Recently, the Association of Fine Artists of Applied Arts and Designers of Serbia (ULUPUDS) awarded the title of Publishing Venture of the Year to the monograph Goranka Matić, a joint edition by RTS Publishing, Službeni glasnik, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Society of Popular Culture Lovers and Galerija Novembar. Dedicated to one of the most renowned photographers from this region, who worked actively for more than forty years across the artistic scenes of Serbia, Yugoslavia and Belgrade, the monograph stands as a monumental document of an era, presented across 670 pages and more than one thousand photographs. The guide through the monograph is the artist herself, who in her own words describes the context in which she worked and in which her photographs were created, from the world of Belgrade’s New Wave and the art scene of the eighties to the images that recorded political events and their protagonists during the nineties and after.

I called one of the editors of the edition, Una Popović, a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, and asked with excitement how she feels today as she leafs through this major work now set before us. Now that Goranka is gone, now that her voice will no longer be heard in person and her photographs will be with us for a long time to come, the book draws us into her words, her descriptions of events, her views and her commentary. We begin reading it in her voice. She guides us through the book and through her own life. This gives the edition a special and almost sentimental tone and a sense of importance. For me personally, turning its pages now that she is no longer here creates an ambivalent feeling. It brings into focus the time in which she worked, the people she collaborated with and the energy she brought to every project. This is why I believe this edition is a fitting way to celebrate her life and work. In a socially and politically tense and pivotal moment, a book about Goranka, her integrity, her dignity, her professionalism and her social awareness becomes both a reminder and a warning.

Actress Sonja Savić, 1987.

Goranka studied art history and grew up in the world of the Student Cultural Center. The May days of grief and pride in 1980 marked the beginning of her professional engagement with photography, which, as she often said, started by accident. Walking through the streets of Belgrade and moved by Tito’s death, she created a series of photographs of shop windows arranged in response to the event. The years that followed brought exciting assignments and, among other things, the status of an iconic photographer of the entire Belgrade art scene. Her work appeared in the celebrated Yugoslav rock magazine Džuboks, and later in Start, Svjet, Politika, Liberation, Delo and Duga. As a celebrated photographer of the New Wave during the eighties, she shot album covers for many Belgrade bands, from Idoli and their landmark record Odbrana i poslednji dani to collaborations with Ekatarina Velika, Cane, Koja and Bajaga.

The coming political shifts in the country drew her from the world of music, art and film into the political sphere. From the pivotal year 1990 until 2006, Goranka served as photo editor at the weekly Vreme, then moved into the same role at the daily Politika, followed by her post at RTS. She created many now classic images documenting turbulent social and political events on the streets of Belgrade, from the ninth of March and anti war gatherings to student protests and nearly every major demonstration that followed. Her photographic work has been exhibited internationally since 1986. She received the October Salon Award, Politika’s award for the exhibition Tiho teče Sutjeska at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and the Osvajanje Slobode Award from the Maja Maršević Tasić Foundation.

The 9 March 1991 demonstrations.

The cover of the monograph draws attention without any doubt because it is simple and restrained. It bears only her first name, without the surname, since everyone knows exactly who it refers to. Una explains that Goranka knew from the start what she wanted. She was exceptionally open, democratic and without vanity. Her strength lay in that rare combination of confidence and an eagerness to listen to others. Confidence and courage are not expressed through rigidly holding on to principles at any cost but through continually strengthening one’s creativity through dialogue. Working and spending time with her only confirmed this for me.

During the process we almost always agreed, though there were moments of surprise. I remember when she told us with great excitement that she knew exactly what should be on the cover of the monograph, a photograph of her palm. At first this did not impress me. With so many iconic images of the New Wave, music and political events, portraits and scenes that defined entire eras, she chose a neutral, almost conceptual photograph that seems to reveal very little at first glance.

Idoli, Atelje 212, 1982.

The photographic oeuvre of Goranka Matić is remarkably wide ranging, spanning music and politics, documentary work and her own artistic projects. This monograph stands as the most extensive record of both her work and our cultural and political history. Alongside Una’s contributions, the volume includes selected texts by Boris Miljković, Branko Vučićević, Nenad Lj. Stefanović, Bojana Pejić, Dragan Ambrozić and Zorica Kojić. I was curious to know which period of Goranka Matić’s work she finds most compelling. I love her eighties the most, she says without hesitation. It is a period defined by layers and self discovery, from her early photographs when she was still learning the technique and instinctively catching the moment, to the cycle Days of Grief and Pride, her first true photographic project featuring images of Tito in shop windows. This period also produced the iconic portraits of the rock scene, direct and energetic, free of any kind of censorship. Later, in more intimate cycles, she turns the camera on herself and reflects on her own practice, where her vision as a photographer sits at the intersection of the personal, the biological and the professional, Una Popović adds. She is also the curator of Goranka’s retrospective exhibition Experience in the Crowd, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. The show was first presented in 2021 and, after great success, traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska in Banja Luka and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina before being shown at the National Museum of Montenegro, the Miodrag Dado Đurić Art Gallery in Cetinje. I wanted to know what kinds of impressions she carries from those exhibitions and whether the reactions of the audiences differed. They were similar, I would say, because Goranka is unifying. We all meet in her photographs. They feel like large family gatherings. Friends from Croatia come to Belgrade, Idoli play in Zagreb, Azra performs in the Pinki hall, Tito’s death marks an entire nation. When we were in Zagreb people looked at the eighties and the protagonists of the New Wave with nostalgia, while in Montenegro they approached her portraits of politicians with particular curiosity.

Milan Mladenović, 1992.

The full scope of Goranka Matić’s work would feel incomplete without someone capable of seeing it in its entirety and translating it into an authentic visual language. Designer Borut Vild did exactly that. With his distinct approach he gave this monograph life, shaping it into something new so that we can fully immerse ourselves in the magical world of this photographer. He has created more than fifty visual identities and the design for several hundred publications, books and magazines. He has served as art director and designer for the Center for Contemporary Art Belgrade, the Belgrade Circle, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and also for the company Politika. I asked him what excited him most about this project. What excites me is the chance to enter someone’s life and work deeply and fully. No matter how much I thought I knew, I kept learning throughout the process, not only about the artists but also about the time they lived in and the circumstances in which they worked. And I learned a fair amount about myself too.

Work on monographs can be exhausting, especially because many people are involved in trying to present someone’s life from every angle. Besides Una and Borut, the RTS editor Nebojša Grujičić also worked on the book, so I wanted to know how the three of them collaborated during the process. Goranka unfortunately never had the chance to see or comment on the design. She passed away after the initial discussions. It took time before we were even able to return to working on the monograph. The collaboration with editors Una Popović and Nebojša Grujičić was exceptional. Without Una’s emotional connection and deep understanding of Goranka’s work and without Nebojša’s energy, knowledge and persistence, this book would not exist. The hardest part was dealing with the enormous number of photographs. Most of Goranka’s images are in the Leica format with no later cropping. When the same format repeats throughout the monograph it can become tiring and the rhythm monotonous. That was the biggest challenge for me. Whenever possible I played with spreads or changed the pacing by enlarging some photographs and reducing others.

Goranka Matić during the preparations for the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 2021, photo by Bojana Janjić.

Photographing in the middle of crowds and the fast pace of contemporary life, whether at rock concerts in the eighties or political protests in the nineties, sharpened Goranka Matić’s eye and made her one of the most authentic witnesses of her time. Her ability to capture the drama of an event, the psychology of an individual and the spirit of an era, while keeping her visual language aligned with the evolving tendencies of photography and art, made her body of work remarkably broad and multilayered. So I asked Una and Borut to close their eyes and tell me which of her photographs appears before them first. Let me mention a few scenes, almost like film sequences in which she is the central figure, marking the key moments of an era. Goranka on the ledge of the National Theatre beside Vuk Drašković during the demonstrations of 9 March 1991. Goranka rushing into the crowd with the members of EKV in front of SKC. A photograph of Goranka with her friends in her apartment, all brilliant and important women, Una says with emotion. Borut joins in immediately. The first things that come to mind are Idoli in bathrobes, Magi in a sweater with her hand raised, Koja on the stairs, Štulić shot from a low angle, Branko V. with his inevitable cigarette at a protest in Dedinje, our daughter as a baby at an anti war protest in Bosnia, two or three diptychs from Sutjeska, Jelena Šantić with a whistle and her shoe raised high. There is more, of course, which is hardly surprising after so many years of close observation.

All of this proves that the work of Goranka Matić goes far beyond photography. It becomes a way of understanding the world we lived in, the people who shaped it and the moments that changed us. Her images are not just records of time but living spaces of memory where history, emotion and aesthetics intertwine. They preserve the essence of an era and reflect the unique vision of an artist who saw beyond the surface of events. She saw further than any of us.

The promotion of the monograph Goranka, dedicated to photographer Goranka Matić, along with the preview screening of the feature length documentary Goranka by Boris Miljković, will take place on Monday, 24 November at 6 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade.