In Belgrade twenty years ago (while Yugoslavia was under Communist rule), one of the first privately owned shops to open for business was Magna Carta, a book and art supply store, where this photograph was taken in May 1987. The photographer was a young man working for Stav, a youth magazine whose title translates as “Attitude.” The man in the apron is Vladimir Stakić, a well-known rock’n’roll journalist of the day, and new entrepreneur. The apron (and possibly the pencil) was designed by Milan Bastajić, the founder of Magna Carta. The photographer is Goran Basarić, who has lived in Vancouver since leaving Serbia in 1994. The Hero of the Socialist Kitchen apron was invoked in Geist 64, in the story “Voices” by David Albahari, who also left Serbia in 1994 and now lives in Calgary. The photograph above resurfaced when Goran Basarić read Albahari’s story, remembered the apron and began digging into his old prints and negatives. At the time this photograph was taken, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the wars, the NATO interventions, the war-crimes trials and the exodus of so many people from a country that no longer existed, lay only a few years in the future.
