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Ana Djordjevié Social Differentiation and Construction of Elites in Belgrade Studio Photography at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Introduction As Pierre Bourdieu has shown in his thoroughly discussed Photography: A Middlebrow Art, photography, or rather the photographic practice of families, aided in defining membership and marking important occasions (1996). Studio photography as well as other means of visual (re)presentation came to play a crucial role in the formation and consolidation of Serbian elites at the end of the nineteenth century. Photographic portraits took upon several meanings for their owners. The photographs were collected, kept, and exchanged as objects of pleasure and expressions of friendship, mutual affection, and collective memories. Traces thereof can be found in dedications and inscriptions on their backsides. At the same time, they contributed to a large extent to personal identity building and documented and reinforced feelings of belonging by visually emphasizing role, relevance, power, and status of the sitters. In the present paper I will discuss the ways in which the developing heterogeneous Serbian bourgeoisie used photographs in the formation of a common group identity at the turn of the twentieth century. Taking into consideration that photographs are a form of communication, carrying and at the same time challenging dominant ideologies and narratives of identity and belonging, Self-Other relations involved in this process will be made visible. Identity in this context is seen as a dynamic process embedded in the social relations of identifying oneself as being recognized by others (Hall 1994). Embracing Edward W. Said’s critique of Orientalism, Stuart Hall pointed to something that I think is also essential in the analysis of identities in the Balkans. That is the experience of the self as the Other, which is transported through powerful Western narratives (1994: 394-395), and the perpetuation of those narratives through what Milica Baki¢-Hayden called “nesting by one of the most prominent Belgradian studio photographers of his time, Milan Jovanovié (1863-1944). Today they are preserved in different memory institutions in Belgrade. These studio portraits, which had been produced for private consumption, reveal a romanticized view of rural life and an idealized picture of a unique Serbian urban identity, which was considered other than western European, and other than Ottoman or Oriental. What they share is an internalized knowledge of proper posing in front of the camera—a new “body language” as the U.S.-based art
