Virtual Gallery of the Regional Museum of Jagodina
Author of the exhibition: Jasmina Trajkov
Biography
Slobodan Štetić was born in 1958 in Jagodina. At the Graphic Department of the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, he graduated in photography with professor Dragoljub Kažić and book graphics with professor Bogdan Kršić. For almost half a century he has been equally successful in photography, graphic design and painting. He is a Full professor at the Faculty of Pedagogical Sciences in Jagodina, University of Kragujevac. He exhibited at hundreds of individual and group exhibitions of graphic design, photography, painting and illustration in many cities in the country and abroad: France, Poland, Finland, Germany, Ukraine, Canada, San Marino, Switzerland, Egypt, Taipei (Taiwan), Russia, Italy, Mexico, Croatia, Lithuania, China, Colombia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ecuador, Peru, Dubai, Korea, USA, Bolivia and others. He created more than 200 books, monographs and catalogs in the field of poetry, literature, science and art. He enriched several poetry books with his illustrations. He has the title of candidate-master of photography of the Photo Association of Serbia.
Slobodan Štetić began photographing during the seventies of the 20th century, and in 1978 he showed his works to the public for the first time. First, he exhibited two photographs at the prestigious October Salon held in Belgrade in the period from October 19 to November 19, 1978, and already on October 25 he held his first solo exhibition of photographs in Jagodina. Sensing the great potential and talent of the young photographer, professor Miodrag Đorđević wrote in the text for the catalog of this exhibition: “With his first exhibition performance, he showed seriousness and quality that surprises and promises… By all accounts, it seems that a novice has sailed into the great river of photography from whom we have yet to expect.” In 1979, Štetic’s photographs were again exhibited alongside the works of the best Yugoslav artists from the field of fine and applied arts at the 20th October Salon in Belgrade.
He was also active in Photo Cinema Club “Vuk Karadžić”, which was founded in Jagodina in early 1981, where he held the position of president of this association for some time. During the eighties of the last century, Štetić won several awards in the field of photography and exhibited at significant events such as the Art Photography Salon “Žisel”, which is still held today in Omoljica, and the Photo Salon in Belgrade. On this occasion, we will mention only some of the numerous awards he received. In March 1981, he received the first prize at the exhibition “Portrait 81”, which was held at the Photo Salon in Belgrade. At the end of 1981, his photographs were among the fifty best photographs selected by the Art Council of the Photo Association of Yugoslavia, which were presented to audiences in Beijing, East Berlin, Paris and Stockholm during 1982. In April 1982, at the exhibition of experimental photos called “New Photo 82” organized by the Photo Association of Serbia and Photo Club New Belgrade, Štetić won second place in a competition of 1084 photos.
In 1983, he earned his first title within the Photo Association of Yugoslavia – first class photographer. Four decades later, in the photographic opus of Slobodan Štetić, today a candidate-master of photography, there is a series of photographs with different themes. He especially distinguished himself as a portraitist of “ordinary” people, most often members of socially disadvantaged groups, but he also photographed famous names of Serbian culture. In the first part of the presentation, portraits created in the villages near Jagodina or in the city itself are shown. These are analog photographs taken during the eighties of the 20th century.
In the second virtual exhibition, a special part of Štetic’s photos from the cycle “Disappearing” is presented. Forty photographs from this cycle were exhibited at the end of June 1987 at an exhibition in the Gallery of the Graphic Collective in Belgrade, which was also his first solo exhibition in this city. In these photographs, he deals with the topic of pollution of the human environment, and of man himself, who is increasingly alienated from the nature that surrounds him. According to Živorad Đorđević, a writer and journalist from Jagodina who followed the work of Slobodan Šetić from the very beginning, the cycle “Disappearing” pointed to the “destroying breath of the industrial and technological era full of restlessness and justified fear of self-destruction”. One of the photos from this cycle called “Remains” was particularly successful at exhibitions throughout the former Yugoslavia. At the exhibition organized by the Photo Association of Yugoslavia held in Belgrade in 1981, this photo won the first prize and a silver plaque was awarded at the Ninth Yugoslav Biennale of Photography “Steel and Oil 1982” held in Sisak. Today this photo is kept in the collection of our museum.
