I was born in the former Yugoslavia, but I have been living and working in France since 2002. I come from a proletarian family from a country that no longer exists, which is perhaps why I return regularly, in search of that human reality that allows me to connect with my roots, with the sole purpose of confirming that it did exist. Among the workers and miners, I have rediscovered the values on which life was built in the past. Life before everything collapsed. My gaze always remains attentive to marginal worlds: I spent some time in an orphanage in Bulgaria, lost at the foot of the mountains, and for the last ten years or so, I have been following the gypsies in the shanty towns around Belgrade. The Habités series is built up over time, image by image, between my memories, my encounters and my emotions with these people. My search focuses on the treasures buried in the hearts of men. My approach is less a journey into the unknown than the need to deepen a relationship forged since childhood. My latest series, La Douce, is a collection of pictures taken between 2004 and 2021 in France and Serbia, fragments of an autobiography halfway between fiction and reality that portray not only the collapse of my country, the former Yugoslavia, but how everything that happened changed my life. I lived through this period in Serbia from beginning to end. In 2002, I came to France. I was animated by the energy of a new beginning: I lived a new stage, I learned the language, I looked for my place in a foreign country, I separated from my children, but I moved on. In this way I have forged a second life. I photograph this journey back and forth between France and Serbia as a bridge between the past and the present. La Douce is the woman who makes the journey to find what has been lost. But let nothing affect it.
https://www.sladjanastankovic.com/
Text: Sladjana Stankovic
Audio: Charlotte Brown (AI)
+ info:
www.audiotecafotografica.com
