SRDJAN ŽIVUL0VIČ: Black Gold

A photographic narrative shot in Tuzla (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in February 2014 during the workers protests against economic stagnation caused by rampant privatisation and corrup-tion. According to art historian Iztok Premrov, Živulović’s is “an impressive photo series, cre-ated in the spirit of journalism and making instant and hasty decisions, yet conveying power-ful moral messages.” Srdjan Živulović, co-founder of the Bobo Photo Agency, is the first Slo-venian photojournalist to win the Pulitzer Prize – the world’s most important photography award. 

The Black Gold series was the offshoot of photojournalist Srdjan Živulović’s assignment in Tuzla, taken when covering the wave of violent demonstrations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In February 2014, thousands of workers protested against economic stagnation caused by rampant privatisation and corruption. More than ten thousand people were made redundant in the course of several years. This was the photojournalist’s main task or subject. However, the photographer found another subject a few kilometres away, a story of human plight that he perhaps found event more telling, provocative and disquieting. Živulović captured the grim realities of the local unemployed and impoverished people searching for the remaining lumps of coal in refuse tailings – transporting the waste to spoil heaps from the Djurdjevik brown coal mine on a conveyor belt –, toiling to gather scraps and hoping to thus eke out a meagre existence. The phenomenon of a coal picker is not new. Having emerged in parallel with the coalmining industry, it is also commonly found in the history of Slovenian mines, e.g. in Zasavje and elsewhere. From this seemingly commonplace subject Živulović created an extraordinary, empathic photographic record of human suffering.