The exhibition Memory and Hope is organised in memory of the photographer Goranka Matić, the unmatched chronicler of the times of a people, a city, a culture. Goranka left us at the very beginning of this turbulent and, by all accounts, revolutionary year. It is strange for the city of Belgrade to no longer have a woman with a camera, a sharp eye, precise in naming phenomena and describing people, with a clear stance on political and cultural events in the country.

The sharp-eyed and sharp-witted Mrs. Vertov, as described by her friend, the screenwriter and literary author Branko Vučićević, left us a wealth of precious memories of situations and circumstances, of people who create events. Although she had not been active as a practicing photographer for several years, while preparing her extensive retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2021, we went through and relived the fascinating eighties and the traumatic nineties together. Just like at her last major exhibition, here too she gathered us in a conglomerate of public events. The last decade of the 20th century in Serbia was turbulent, chaotic, and revolu- tionary time. As a photographer and editor of the weekly Vreme, Goranka actively and consciously followed all political and public social events. Her photographs of political events, civil demonstrations, and initiatives, such as the images taken on the 9th of March 1991 – shots of the clashes during the oppo- sition protests on the streets of Belgrade, the founding of the Federal Republic of Yugosla- via (1992), various protests against the ruling regime at the time, the student demonstra- tions of 1996 and 1997, as well as the count- er-demonstrations of supporters of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, and the bombing of the FR Yugoslavia in 1999 – have become anthological and irreplaceable when analys- ing the political and social realities of this re- gion at the end of the 20th century. They also serve as an official and authentic document of the time. The ability to reflect and sense to recognise the right moment and “capture the decisive scene,” which was evident in her earlier journalistic work during the eighties when she photographed rock concerts and the protagonists of the visual art and music scenes, define Goranka Matić not only as an excellent reporter covering political events, but also as someone who, alongside the im- manently documented scene, simultaneously provides testimony about the medium, her personal position in the society she belongs to, and her stance in assessing the events she witnesses.

Along similar lines, documentary photog- raphy is also considered by Alan Sekula, an American photographer and theorist, when he says: “The documentary is considered art when it transcends its focus on the world, when the work can be appreciated primar- ily as an act of self-expression by the artist” (Wells, 2006, 100). The photographs of the nineties, life on the streets, are based on the idea of physically and psychologically mapping situations and the behaviour of the crowd, but within this “objective approach,” the photographer’s authorial stance on the prevailing ideology of the moment is re- vealed, as is her personal experience and what can be read as a personal “struggle,” “silent activism.” This is why her photographs of nineties Serbia are anthological. Through an examination of both the general and the personal (a large portion of the photographs from the nineties is dedicated to friends, fam-ily, socializing as a parallel world striving to maintain some semblance of normalcy), we are given a probable consistent image of the state of society within this turbulent decade. On one occasion, Goranka said: “I always wanted to present the person in the photo- graph in the best possible way. Even if I didn’t agree with someone’s stance, I always intend- ed to understand it.” Her non-judgmental at- titude, liberalism, the need to notice all dif- ferences, even her humour and nonchalance as conclusion in relation to the opponent’s stance made Goranka – founded in her character – one of the most beloved figures in the cultural and artistic scene of Belgrade and even the former Yugoslavia. In light of the current social situation, with stu- dent blockades and civil protests that have been ongoing for four months and which, in terms of the scale of actions and gatherings, likely surpass even the 5th of October 2000 uprising, in the general spirit of solidarity, overcoming fear, and the clearly palpable social tension that has awakened despite the overall good-natured drive for systemic, so- cial change, the Memory and Hope exhibition seems to us a good occasion to reminisce on and interpret the recent past. Goranka used the title Hope and Memory for a series of pho- tographs from the nineties published in the book Ten Years Against (published by Media Centar, 2001). At this juncture, it seemed like a good title for the exhibition, and through a slight inversion, now as Memory and Hope, it metaphorically refers to and celebrates two lives: recollecting the life, work, and impres- sive photographic legacy of the nineties by Goranka Matić, and, through visual referenc- es to the past as context, the social history of remembering and celebrating Belgrade, which has always bravely, combatively, and optimistically, in service of hope, looked toward a better tomorrow.