CROWD EXPERIENCE WITHIN A SPECIFIC PHOTO UNIVERSE: RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITON OF GORANKA MATIĆ AT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE

Abstract

During the spring of 2021, a large retrospective exhibition of the photographer Goranka Matić named Crowd Experience was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. Matić is a photographer with a complex opus, her presence spanning over forty years on the local cultural scene. The exhibition, separated into five sections, according to themes and genres that dominate the artist’s work, has led to many important questions being raised when thinking about the role of photography and the ways in which photography can be used. The article examines Goranka Matić’s retrospective as a specific photographic universe that encompasses journalistic, documentary and art photography, which makes this exhibition seem like a brief history of photography itself. Because of the interpretations of both contemporary and older artistic praxis, originating from Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Belgrade in the 1980s and the 1990s, this exhibition offered initial and irreplaceable material for future photographic and cultural research of different kind.