19-IV-2019.
This is when when I started reshooting them diaries - scanning is too slow, it's 2000 pages. For a number of years they stayed in that vitrina, then got packed in a cardboard box, along with some political brochures, the collected letters and my school notebook from the last grade of high school, and I took the box to the attic. The box remained untouched until 2013, when majstor Mile redid the roof - that's when I took it down and left it in the garage.
The first seven notebooks I reshot from hand, when visiting the old house to mow the yard, not telling anyone. But then the quality of the shots suffered, it's hard to hold the 1,4kg of eos70 for so long, so I gradually brought all the notebooks and reshot them from a tripod in our upstairs smokeroom. The quality was slightly better and the shooting somewhat less cumbersome - still had to hold right hand on the trigger, and to keep the pages spread with left. The last pages were shot on 03-III-2021..
So for the period between, roughly, 1968 and 22-VIII-1974. I have a reliable, if incomplete and confused, narrator and reminder. Byo is specifically dense in that period.
Today I picked the first notebook, when I went to the old house with Go, Stanley, Anita and Neša. We took the van.
In the afternoon we went all together - all eleven of us - and met Silvija, Dragan and their children, plus Boba to banatskakuća. The owner was astonished, said he never had eight children at one table, the view warms the heart. It was nice, everyone had good time.
On the picture, Raja, Jagoda, Neša. There's no photo with all eight at once, their rhythms were out of sync.
Miraculously, at the other taken table they spoke english and had a baby in a pram. Turns our she was australian, married to a local here, they're visiting... well there's tazbina in serbian, that's wife's family - but what's the word for husband's?
Mentions: 22-VIII-1974., 23-VIII-1976., 03-III-2021., Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), banatskaKuća, Byo (Byo), Dobrivoj Gunaroši (Boba), Dragan Umljanić, eos70, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jagoda Umljanić, majstor Mile, Nenad Berger (Neša), Ryu (Raja), Silvija Umljanić, Stanley Berger, in serbian