Hadzi Miodrag Miladinovic
An important characteristic of Miladinovic’s photography are sicial problems because it is actually everyday life charasteristic of the people living in these parts of the country and of our age in general.
Miodrag-Mica Miladinovic, a fine photography artist of the ULUPUDS and a photography master of the Photo-union of Yugoslavia, works as a professional photographer and the editor in chief of Radio-TV Aleksinac, studio “Vesela televizija”.
He was born in 1957. He took part in more than 250 exhibitions in the country and abroad and won about 80 awards.
He has organized 30 independent exhibitions. His photographs are being published in daily and periodical newspapers and he carries out professional tasks and artistic projects.
One of the characteristics of Serbian photography in the last few decades is that the big majority of present professionals have begun this profession as amateurs, mainly in photo-clubs. Later, photography became their main, even the only profession.
That also stands for Hadzi Miodrag Miladinovic – his work is based on traditional experience and on club and photo-union exhibition aesthetics. Later, he adopted his development to the needs of professional photography. From the very beginning of his career he has been expressing himself in a creative and author’s way.
The first Miodrag’s preoccupation are landscapes and that is the subject matter of his first independent exhibition. This period is important for Miladinovic not only because of the photographs he has realized but also because of his author’s maturity and controlling over the technology and photography aesthetics and he is qualifying for further successful work. Miladinovic soon realized three characteristics that would be typical throughout his creative work.
The first one is the forming of a recognizable author’s access. The second is the appreciation of the subject matter he is working with. Actually, the theme and its importance are what determine Miladinovic whether to devote himself to it or not. The third characteristic is that he has chosen cycles in his creative work – which is to say – he is working with a theme or some motives for some time – long enough to work it out deliberately.
The analysis of Miladinovic’s photographs shows that he is analyzing the material he is taking pictures of in great detail – then hi is devotedly and professionally realizing it.
The percepted cadre contains all the information that is necessary for understanding the subject matter. The actors of the scene are functioning naturally and logically in it.
Miladinovic chooses the standing point so that he is also a participant of the material he is taking pictures of, but he is not disturbing the scenes that are going on in front of him.
This is the moment when Miladinovic, together with the people who are behaving naturally in front of the camera, expresses a special skill. The light in his photographs is also natural and it helps the photographer to preserve the atmosphere. With the special feeling for the “decisive moment”, Miladinovic’s photographs enable us to feel as though we are present in the scenes he is taking pictures of. Everything looks persuasive and trustworthy. This is the best tradition of the documentary photography.
Miladinovic approaches photography as though it is the means of creative expression, but the subject matter which is preoccupying him in the period of his author’s maturity is the everyday life, especially of the town he is living in – Aleksinac and its surroundings. Having worked long and diligently, Miladinovic as a chronicler has formed precious documents about people and time he is working in. Further more, the author is not satisfied solely with the registration of events. The material he is working with initiates him to think profoundly about it and by respecting the original meaning of the photographed motives, the author is trying to make the monograph out of percept scenes and to expose the essence of the subject matter. The social problems seem to be a very important characteristic of Miladinovic’s work as they are the part of everyday life and the general characteristic of our age. The best example for this is the following projects: “The Life of the Miners from the Town of Aleksinac” and “Life as an Illusion”.
Miladinovic has created documents about the accident in the mines of Aleksinac, war destruction in Slovenia, Bosnia and Kosovo; the monograph “By Fire over Aleksinac”, but he also worked with beautiful visual totalities: “A Journey through the History of Greece”, “holy Mount Athos”, “Hilandar”, “The Monastery of St. Steven” in Lipovac near Aleksinac, and others.
Miladinovic is extremely diligent and his photography opus is rich and the quality of his photography realization is calling for our respect. Yet, the best thing about his work is his devotion and honesty. Miladinovic’s photographs are always human. Humanity is his the main characteristic and of enormous importance in his creative work. He has already shown a high potential and it would be good if the circumstances could enable him to exploit it as efficiently as he was doing it until now.
Dragoljub Tosic
