Danube Division – ongoing project -
As a child Vladimir listened to the stories told by his father and grandfather about this larger-than-life man, called Vladislav, his great grandfather, who fought in the WWI as a soldierat the Salonica font*. With greatattentionhe learned about theadventures and events that his great grandfather lived through as a part of the Danube Division, a division that crossed theSalonicafront in their liberation efforts against occupations forces.Images ofsoldiers retreating on footin the harsh winter conditionsfrom Austria-Hungary to Serbia, Albania all the way to Greece,stayed carved inVladimir’s minduntil today. As an adult he started to contemplatemore about these events,engaging withhis fatherin conversation about historical events and the stories his great grandfather told.Still influenced by these images and stories, Vladimir wanted to learn more on how these events unfolded and he started to dig deeper.
The work will follow the story of the photographer's great-grandfather who was a soldier in the Danube Division, a division that crossed theSalonicafront, in the end resulting in the liberation ofKingdom ofSerbia. It will explore not only the historical landscape of the battlefields, but also the memories of a family and the power of oral history in creating a legacy.Theseries will document landscape relics of the battlegrounds, clandestine gravesites and memorials in Serbia, Kosovo, Albania,Greeceall the way to Tunisia.The project usesfamily’soral history asa catalystin tracing his great grandfather’sjourney and will beassisted with archival materials and research.
Theproject becomes a multi-layered one, it unravels the personal and biographical, while exploring the historical background of these events from more than a hundred years ago.Landscapes often forgotten and disfigured by the passage of time, submerged in the oblivion of nature’s and human intervention but still standing defiantly, bear witness not only to the geography but also to the personal stories.The historical timeline will reveal the places where the Division fought and lost lives, while the personal stories influenced by those events will be conveyed through portraits of the photographer's family and other descendants of the soldiers in the Danube Division.
Relationship between the landscape, war and the human intervention is ever changing one.The war is a destruction force, it erases everything, the land and human lives.These battlefields and clandestine graves continue to live in the memory of those who survived and in the stories they tell. What was once destroyed, can be rebuilt again. What once was a bloody battlefield, today may seem as pictorial and peaceful landscape.Memory has the same ability, to erase, to honor and to transform.This workwilltry toexamine thesymbolic union of a memory, identity andhuman resilience.
