21-V-1977.: More photos
Frail is the remembrance, weak is the knowledge, but this is more or less the probable time when we met rastibuđilizovane klejbezable, which is untranslatable because it's meaningless. Few pieces of these two words may hint to some meaning: prefix raz-, ras- is akin to dis-, as in disassemble, though it mostly means „in all directions“, as in distribute. Buđ is mildew. Suffix -izovan is analog to -ized. Bez means without. Suffix -abla sounds like something from majstors' german slang, a machine part of sorts. Taken all together, again nothing, but has some shape.
That was the name of a theatre show done by Milan Vukotić in Teatar Levo (theatre left), which soon became a cult title and a standalone legend. I don't remember how I got wind of it, perhaps there were a few posters downtown, not too many, these are amateurs. The show was put on stage in Dom, now in its new building, renamed into „home of youth“ (now youth as a period of life, previously it was the age group - different words in serbian). Not only everything had to be named differently from what it was before the war, it now had to be different from what it was three years ago. The posters must have been printed by Dom itself, the troupe hardly had the money for that. Though, considering how fast they sold all the seats, who knows...
Milan's mom was the famous Ana Vukotić, one of the legendary personae of the city. Milan's sister lived somewhere in Holland, working as a costimographer in some theatre. Whenever a show was taken off the repertoir, the costumes would be discarded, not just the gowns but the footware, hats etc as well, which she then regularly packed and sent home to mom. Madame Ana lived somewhere in the area, in the Lesnina-ruža-25. maj triangle, and often went for walks to the park at šećerana, so we'd see her go by. She was hard to miss, because her attires were always lively, she deftly combined those costumes into really neat combinations, in merry colors. I remember one bright yellow dress with a hat of the same color with flat wide rim, with a dark red ribbon on which a golf ball sized cherry was attached, and the matching shoes in the color of the cherry. She'd drop by to visit my mom sometimes, they used to work at the same place for a while. Well, whole city knew her. Around 2020 I searched for her on the web, and in two minutes found a picture of her, walking over the pedestrian bridge, in exactly the kind of dress and hat combination, with flowers on hat instead of a cherry and all white. One of a kind, can't miss.
The show floored us. Threeminute dramas lasting five minutes each, with different characters which never repeat, on various subjects, poking pure fun shaped as political satire or vice versa. Only later, in the following years, the actors who grew out of this show will start emerging on the big scene and achieve lots of fame... all the way to Žika Milenković, who was then only one among other actors, remembered exactly because of his special dose and type of mockery, somehow outstanding as crazier than the team's standard.
This could be any year in the seventies, who knows when was this - did it at least twice. Attic, above the living room. Tripod from the club, otherwise I don't know how I'd get the regula to stay calm for a whole second or longer.
The sunbeam is inscenation, there was no hole, I lifted a tile to get the effect. Mr Brown stayed in motion all the time. Not much like with the bright portions, this wasn't a reshot negative, this is a scanned moldy print, and the mold was richer than silver in that area. The hole in the gable is a pigeonhole, one brick big, and there's no sunshine coming to it, it's facing neighbor's gable, which was in the shade. It's a matter of sufficiently long exposure for that to look so bright.
The cube in the middle is a stack of Zabavnik since 1961 and until it switched from newspaper to magazine format. This is where I came to read the comics. I'd literally turn over the whole stack and pick one issue, read the certain page, then lay it back in place, pick next, repeat. I'd spend long hours there as a kid, then again as a bigger kid. Dad did some bookbinding initially, he bound the few years of Kekec and Mali Jež („Little hedgehog“, the kid edition of „Jež“, which was a prominent comic/satyrical magazine since 1921), as they were of smaller format.
To the left of the shot are also stacks of Ilustrovana Politika, while it was still black and white, and perhaps NIN... um, no, NIN wasn't collected until it went to color and newsmagazine format, which was then stacked in my room, and when that got too bulky, moved to the garage.
More experiments with night shots, this time just a lighter, and a rather long exposure. Don't know what I used for tripod, I guess a shelf in the cupboard.
As for the pictures on the walls, there was a shortage of walls. So we expanded to the ceiling. For the 3d atmosphere, we also pinned a cardboard box, so be it pop art.
For this shot I put praktika on the floor, opened the shutter, flashed from the side.
Mentions: 04-I-2024., 25. maj, Dom omladine, Lesnina, majstor, praktika, regula, ruža, šećerana, in serbian