| At the invitation of the Azerbaijani Union of Photographers to participate in the Second International Art Photography Festival called "Аyna 2007" ("Mirror 2007"), Tomislav Peternek, as one of the world’s leading photographers, had an individual exhibition at the Baku City Gallery. He was also honoured with being invited to open this important photography event, which was held at various venues throughout the city. For local photographers as well as those from Georgia, Russia, Slovenia, America, Tatarstan, Turkey, France, Canada, Norway, Afghanistan, and Peternek as the sole participant from Serbia, the photography art week in the Azerbaijani capital entailed an unforgettable encounter with colleagues and a favourably disposed public. |
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"The Azerbaijanis appreciate photography. They discussed photographs, invited photographing ... Furthermore, they have many young, talented photographers; photography is cultivated, as was the case during the Soviet Union", said Peternek, upon returning to Belgrade. In addition to the 30 anthological black and white photographs, Peternik also showed a film by Nikola Stojanović called At the Close of the Millennium. Accompanied by a musical score by the late Ksenija Zečević, the film off ers an essay of Peternek’s wartime photographs for which he was awarded the Grand Prix at a Belgrade International Festival as well as in Russia (the Golden Knight Award). On this particular occasion, Peternek also presented his most marked essay of photographs. One of the most comprehensive ones is "Život" ("Life"), shown in Paris in 2002 (this was an individual exhibition at the Yugoslav Cultural Centre). Referring to the works on display, the master photographer set out: "I photograph everything, everywhere and always. Everything! Life on the margins I photograph simply because I want to draw attention to certain details before which we are prone to close our eyes…"
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Peternek’s cover pages for the NIN weekly newsmagazine were well received in Baku. He remembers a great photographer remarking to him in Paris: "But Tomo, this is not hard to do with a computer!" To which he replied: "Take a look at the year when it was taken. There were no computers at that time."
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As it were, this was a demonstration of photographic skills.
Peternek took with him a CD with the essay called Rendezvous avec Paris (1969–2007) that reflects the stand of the "Serbian Cartier-Bresson", as colleagues from the Le Figaro daily newspaper called him, namely that it is the small things and ordinary people that make life and that fine art photography is poetry.
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The public in Baku also kindly responded to the photographs called 45 Nights of Hell in Belgrade, taken during the 1999 bombing campaign of Belgrade.
The compact disc also contains a chapter called "USSR" with photographs Peternek shot in Baku 30 years ago.
After the Moscow exhibition called Two Rivers and in Lithuania, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan...
He hopes soon to be in a position to show his photographs taken in Sicily, in Greece, while the photos taken in America have not all been shown.
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He displayed part of this material during his 1988 retrospective at the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion, after showing them at the American Cultural Centre in Belgrade. A voluminous monograph is currently under preparation and the public is eagerly awaiting it.
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| Tomislav Peternek, who has been awarded the Excellence FIAP (International Federation of Photographic Art) title, was born in Vinkovci in 1933, and began working as a newspaper photographer in Svetlost (Кragujevac), then in Borba, Mladost, Jugoslovenska Revija … As of 1970, he has been photography editor for NIN newsmagazine. In addition to being a photo reporter, he also did advertising, fashion and underwater photography. He is a member of the Association of Fine and Applied Artists and Designers of Serbia (ULUPUDS) and of the Association of Journalists of Serbia. He has been doing underwater photography since 1980 (Caribbean Sea, Indian Ocean, Adriatic Sea). In 1993, he became a freelancer. His photographs have been published in domestic newspapers, and he has also worked for foreign photo-agencies (Reuters, Eastlight, Sygma…). He has won numerous gold medals and plaques for his photographs (in Zell am See, Plovdiv, Belgrade, Berlin, Piran, Kharkov, Kiev ...) as well as two lifetime achievement awards ("Svetozar Marković" presented by the Association of Serbian Journalists, and by the National Centre for Photography, respectively). The Belgrade Student Cultural Centre published a monograph titled Peternek, Photographs in 1984, while the Foto-Savez Jugoslavije issued a publication devoted to him as part of its edition called The Masters of Photography. | |
