Recently, Burn Magazine announced Matt Lutton, a Belgrade-based U.S. photographer, as the winner of the Emerging Photography Fund for 2012. Lutton’s winning portfolio Only Unity is a long term documentary project about Serbia and the Serbs “in the aftermath of Yugoslavia”.
Lutton grew up in the Pacific Northwest, watched Top Gun, obsessed over airplanes and “got a very dark picture of the enemy from movies and books about the Soviet Union.” When he was fifteen years old, Lutton visited Russia on a school trip. The experience confounded all his expectations.
“It changed my whole perspective on how the world worked,” says Lutton. “It drove me to keep studying and learning. When I arrived at University, though I knew then I wanted to try to be a photographer, I chose to study Russian, Eastern European and Central European history.”
Throughout his years in the Balkans, Lutton has shared new work through his Tumblr, and also kept us updated on his preferred eats.
We’ve followed Lutton’s work for many years, not least because he is – alongside his DVAFOTO co-editor M. Scott Brauer – one of our favorite photobloggers.
We talked to Lutton about the origins of the work, the complex politics of the region and what he plans to do with the $10,000 award.
Wired.com: How did you get interested specifically in the Serbs and Serbia?
Matt Lutton: I remember some of the news coverage coming out of the Balkans in the 1990s, and I have distinct memories of when the bombing of Serbia began in 1999. We watched it on CNN in my world history class.
As I began to photograph I came across so much important photojournalism from the Balkans: Inferno by James Nachtwey, The Albanians by Joachim Ladefoged, Kosovo by Paolo Pellegrin, and many others. All that history and all that work made me curious about what the region looked like now, when seemingly no one was talking about it. When I met a professor at the University of Washington in 2007 who was leading a study trip to the Balkans, I jumped at the chance to go. We started in Belgrade. I fell in love with the city my first week. I chose to move there in 2009, because I found so many interesting things happening around me there and many stories that I wanted to photograph.
Wired.com: The Balkans region is very complicated politically and socially. Can you briefly and effectively summarize the events in the region since the Balkans War bringing us up to today?
Matt Lutton: I think most people know that there was a country called Yugoslavia and that it was essentially born in World War II, uniting different ethnic groups and countries in the Balkans under the leadership of Tito. But this process and this war really sowed the seeds for the horrible destruction of the country in the 1990s; recent history has a lot more to do with the past than we might realize. It is not, however, “ancient ethnic hatreds” as so many people simplify the problems in the region to be. There are specific grievances, memories and fears that were stoked by political and military leaders in 1991 and 1999, and it is still happening today.
Also critically important is the role of economic and industrial collapse in the 1990s. Yugoslavia was a relatively healthy economy, exporting goods worldwide (including cars to the United States, perhaps not very good ones, but they are one of the few countries who do break in to that market) and trading internally very efficiently. With the break-up came borders, sanctions, middle men, disruptions. Wars only heighten this, making the few who have connections to get around these obstructions very wealthy, and leaving the majority without money or goods.
Academics also refer to Serbia as having gone through a “delayed transition” from communism to a free market. There are still privatization issues to be worked through in that country, which speaks to fundamental structural issues in the economy. In the 1990s so many people were fighting for survival, either in the cities or on the battlefields.
Wired.com: What does the title Only Unity refer too?
Matt Lutton: There is an expression in Serbian, that is derived from the symbols on the Serbian Orthodox cross, the “4 S’s.” Samo sloga Srbina spasava translated as “Only Unity Saves the Serbs.” The expression has always been interesting and confusing to me. What does Unity in this sense mean? Does it overlap at all with Tito’s idea of “Brotherhood and Unity” in Yugoslavia?
My project is an exploration of the idea of Unity in the Balkans, and especially amongst the Serbs. What is Unity, how is the idea of Unity used for good and evil, how do people understand it? In my experience now, I feel that people often say one thing and do another when considering this word in the Balkans.
“Only Unity” is also an extremely divisive phrase, with Serbian nationalist overtones. I’ve been criticized by friends for touching on it with this project, but I feel it is an important idea that needs serious reflection. We should confront the power of this phrase, and all of the strong emotions that it brings out in people from the Balkans on all sides. It is fascinating that words and a single symbol have such long memories and evoke so much feeling. I want to explore that … and to question that.
Wired.com: Why has it taken so long to create Only Unity?
Matt Lutton: It has taken five years to get this far in my project. I arrived in the Balkans for the first time in 2007 and traveled in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. There are pictures from that first trip that are still in some of my edits. There are also pictures from 2008 that are in the portfolio with which I won the Emerging Photographer Fund award.
The idea of the project though did not coalesce until 2009-2010, and I’ve been working on it since then, re-editing the pictures I had shot before and going out to find new pictures that would help tell my story. Some pictures have come from time spent on other assignments, but most are the products of trips I’ve made with the idea that they would help fill in the gaps of my experience in the Balkans. I won’t be done with this project until I am able to visit and spend time in all the corners of the region that I think are important to the idea of Unity, places where that word has ramifications.
My concept of Unity has changed and deepened the longer I’ve spent living in Belgrade and with the more people and places I’ve been able to experience. I could have published this project a year or two ago, it would have had the bones of this story I’m interested in but it would not have had as many subtleties.
Only Unity is actually far from being done, there is a lot more that I need to learn and many places that I need to go before I feel confident in saying “I’ve finished this story, and I know exactly what I want to say about it.” This process necessarily takes time, you have to be in a place and really live there, have friends and a life, to touch on the really deep emotions. I think I’m getting there.
Wired.com: Are there any stories that you still want to investigate further? Any cultures or towns that hold a mystery?
Many places. I think I could go anywhere in the region and find some element of my story lurking. But I’m most eager to visit the Krajina in Croatia, where a large Serbian community lived but was pushed out at the end of the Bosnian war in 1995. I need to explore the Republika Srbska much more, and I want to re-visit some Serbian villages in Kosovo. I’m sure as I travel I’ll find more areas to visit, that is always how it has worked for me. One door opens another.
Wired.com: You’ve mentioned a book is in the offing?
Matt Lutton: I’ve always thought that the best way to present a project of this length would be a book, so from the beginning thats how I’ve conceived of this project, as a book project. But any physical object is a long way off. I’ve played around with some drafts, I’ve thought a lot about how it could come together and the unique ways that a book would be able to help me shape and share the ideas I have in this story. It has been useful to play around with the form early on, before I’ve finished the project itself. It helps me to figure out what I need to work on. I’ve also received a lot of advice from friends about that process, and it is a long one. Check with me next year.
Wired.com: What does one do with $10,000?
Matt Lutton: First, I’m going to replace some broken equipment that I’ve been putting off for most of the last year. I am fortunate that this has happened when it did, both my computer and camera are on their last legs.
The majority of the funds will go to traveling around the Balkans on road-trips. What I need to finish this project is the freedom to travel around to harder-to-reach areas of the Balkans where I can’t just hop on a bus, or just pass through. I’m thinking about buying my dream car actually, an old Lada Niva, in some ridiculous color.
Wired.com: What’s the best dish served in the Balkans?
Matt Lutton: I’m a bit obsessed with food these days. The Balkans, as much as I complain with my friends, is actually a terrific place to eat. There are so many great dishes: Prebrenac (baked beans), Bosanski Lonac (“Bosnian Pot”), mixed grill in Serbia, seafood on the coast. But the one dish I crave more than anything is the Burek (meat pie) and Krompirusa (potato pie) from a little shop in Bascarsija, the Turkish neighborhood of Sarajevo. It is called Burekdjinica Bosna. It is probably my favorite restaurant in the world.
Wired.com: What’s next?
Matt Lutton: I am in the States for the summer, and then back to Belgrade at the end of August. The goal now is to finish Only Unity.
I actually have a couple of assignments planned in Africa. It will be great to photograph some places new, outside of this project that I’ve been focused on for the last few years, but I’m very much looking forward to getting back on the road in the Balkans this fall.
All images: Matt Lutton
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Be sure to check out the work of the other winners of the Burn Emerging Photography Fund. The two runners-up were: Simona Ghizzoni and Giovanni Cocco, and the seven finalists were: Ian Willms, Gustavo Jononovich, Ayman Oghanna, Laia Abril, Danny Wilcox Frazier, Bieke Depoorter, and Anastasia Taylor-Lind.
