I’ve been trying to understand how a city is supposed to grow to serve people better, yet often fails; how we once built practically and beautifully, and now keep demolishing the old under the illusion that the new will be cleaner, better, more comfortable. It rarely is.

Field notes: Belgrade

This is a selection from a long-term effort to record Belgrade as it really looks and feels: its street corners, markets, leftover fragments of the Yugoslav aesthetic that persist in places where the city keeps building over itself.

I use basic film cameras and hand-process the rolls myself. The limitations of the method are appropriate: quick shooting, minimal control, and no staging. The roughness stays in the work and reflects the conditions under which these pictures are made.

Most of these moments happen in pauses: people sitting, waiting, smoking, watching nothing in particular. Time stretches in bus stops, kiosks, benches, and all those spaces that were not designed for staying, yet constantly occupied.

At the markets, people sit, wait, watch the passage between stalls. The structures are built to function, then repaired to continue functioning. With layers of paint, tape, replaced parts they hold for now. Walking requires attention to uneven ground, the space resists speed. These places remain while other parts of the city are replaced. They refuse to get gentrified.