Milan Jovanović (photographer)

Milan Jovanović (1863–1944) was one of the most influential Serbian photographers of his generation. He is best "known for continuing the traditional path established by Anastas Jovanović (no relation), the first professional photographer in Serbia." Milan was a Court photographer, son of Stevan Jovanović, the brother of Paja Jovanović, one of the most renowned Serbian painters of his time. Born in October 1863 at Vršac, then part of Austria-Hungary, now Serbia, he died in Belgrade shortly before the end of World War II, on March 17, 1944.

He first began studying photography in his father's studio in Vršac, and later in Vienna, Munich, Paris and Trieste. In 1887 he opened his own photography studio in downtown Belgrade. At the outbreak of the Great War he joined the Serbian Army and fought on the Eastern Front until he was wounded in one of the battles. After convalescing in Florence, he returned to Belgrade where he resumed his studio work.

Technically brilliant and endlessly imaginative Milan Jovanović proved that portraitures and photographs that capture people and historical events could be as complicated and challenging as any other kind of art form. His camera work in the field, particularly during the Great War, had captured his subjects in movement, like crossing a river at dusk, and in situations that mocked the artifice of studio poses. He is best remembered, however, for his portrait studies of: Ljubomir Nenadovic (1888); Milan Glisic (1888); Jovan Belimarkovic; Beta Vukanović (1896); Stojan Novaković (1898); Radoje Domanović (1900); Stevan Sremac (1901); Bora Stanković; Đorđe Krstić; Vladislav Petkovic-Dis (1903); Branislav Nušić; Bogdan Popovic (1904); Cica Ilija Stanojevic (1908); and many other contemporaries of his generation.

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