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I nspired by the 90 th anniversary of the declaration forming the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Angelina Banković, senior curator of the City of Belgrade Museum, and photographer Vladimir Jablanov, came upon the idea of showing how some impor- tant Belgrade locations and buildings looked in 1929 compared to how they look today. Their idea resulted in a wonderful exhi- bition called ‘Belgrade then and now’, showing 32 photographs of Belgrade – 16 (from the collection of the City of Belgrade Mu- seum) shot by Colonel Jeremy Stanojević around 1929, with the other 16 photographs, depicting the same Belgrade locations, taken by Vladimir Jablanov in 2019. Speci cally, after World War I, Belgrade became the capital of a much larger country. Its urban territory also increased, con- sidering that it then also included the left bank of the River Sava. In the autumn of 1929, King Aleksandar Karađorđević declared the constituting of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, thereby realising a desire that – for various reasons – couldn’t be realised immedi- ately following the end of the war. Belgrade, as the capital of the new Kingdom, grew and evolved, and soon became a modern European capital. It was during that time that Belgrade gained its rst general urban plan, contemporary buildings and head- quarters of state institutions were constructed that still draw at- tention, such as the Ministry of Finance, today’s building of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, or the former Ministry of Forestry and Mining and the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, which today houses the Ministry of Foreign A airs. With the con- struction of the King Alexander Bridge, the left and right banks of
Trg Nikole Pašića Nikola Pašić Square
the Sava were nally joined for both vehicles and pedestrians. During that same 1929, colonel Jeremija Stanojević, a pro- fessor at the Military Academy, a connoisseur of history and cultural heritage and a passionate amateur photographer who was described by his contemporaries as “a sophisticated aes- thete and a good authority on art history”, began his great pro- ject. Moving on foot through the city with his “box” camera, Stanojević shot images of Belgrade’s buildings and streets, with the wish to preserve a permanent testimony to the changes the capital of the new Kingdom had gone through. Although most of his photographs were destroyed in the 1941 bomb- ing of Belgrade, over 2,000 of them are preserved in the Mu- seum of the City of Belgrade. They today bear witness to both the creative works of a passionate lover of his city and to the city itself and its history. Vladimir Jablanov’s photographs, shot from the same posi- tions and the same perspectives as Jeremija’s old images, very clearly show how the city has changed over the course of al- most a century, and to what extent, enabling visitors to com- pare the contemporary look and atmosphere of streets like Kn- eza Mihaila, Kralja Milana, Francuska, Kneza Miloša or Republic Square with those of 1929. Fascinating traces of the ow of time that you can check out during the Night of the Museums...
Ulica Kneza Miloša Kneza Miloša street
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