Gems of our past, 2014
9 photos on forex
100 x 60 cm (x9)
Edition: 1/5
Belgrade’s architecture and cityscape have been reshaped many times in history, but it is the post-WWII urban expansion and its progressive style that has created a specific regional modernism. National architects, inspired by brutalist tendencies in Europe, developed their very own articulation of postwar modernism in the 60s. These buildings are expressions of a utopian socialist style, but today much of Tito’s postwar vision for Serbia is neglected.
David Pujado has portrayed the icons of this Tito architecture in precise blackand- white photographs, for example the Genex Tower, a 115m-high landmark designed by Mihajlo Mitrovic in 1977 and erected three years later. It owns a 30-storey residential section and an adjacent 26-storey office block, which make it the tallest apartment building in the Balkans. Giant banner advertisements drape most of its façade today. The high-rise buildings in New Belgrade, designed by several architects and divided into 72 units of varying architectural styles, are likewise impressive monolithic rows of concrete towers, even though they have developed a rather dystopian aura over the years. Gems from our past But compared to the plans for reshaping the city with a new waterfront alongside the river Save featuring a 200m tall tower and the biggest shopping mall in the Balkans, as proposed by the Abu Dhabi-based project developer Eagle Hills, these pictures of built structures from the 60s look like promises from a past still waiting to become real. Pujado’s photographs have nothing nostalgic about them. On the contrary, they point to a potential inherent in architecture that doesn’t rely on economic considerations. Although landmarks in Belgrade’s cityscape and familiar to every inhabitant, it might need this distant documentary approach to enable them to compete with the visions for another new Belgrade advertised across the city these days.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon and the Artist Collection
Gift agreement: III-5-65/24.03.2023
Inventory No: 183
Photo: David Pujado
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Pujadó is born in Barcelona and established in Belgrade since 2013 where he directs Bartcelona koncept, a photography platform that has already organized more than 80 exhibitions and events. In 2015, he founded Belgrade Photo Month, an annual exhibition dedicated to the exhibition and promotion of photography in Belgrade, biennial since 2022. In 2022, he founded the Belgrade Photo Book Week, which was held for the first time in May 2022. From 2021 he is a curator and coordinator of the Mostra de Cinema Català in Sérbia, first edition, dedicated to the promotion of Catalan cinema in Serbia, organized by the Ramon Llull Institute. From 2022 he is collaborating with the “Balkan Bioskop”, from the “Saša Marčeta” Foundation with the aim of exchanging visual artists between Serbia and Spain.