Photography is not his passion. It’s not a profession either. Nor the trade.
For Darko Dozet, photography is life. His entire life. Full. Every day. Black and white. Colourful. Rich.
When I first met him some ten years ago and brought him to work for the newspaper Večernje novosti, I knew I was bringing reinforcement for our journalist team, especially for the Novi Sad office. What I didn’t know, however, was that this young man of Kosovian origin and Novi Sad gallantry had in him such a great passion for work, a victorious appetite, a runner’s yearning to be the first, and universal interests.
In good times, times of ripe and serious journalistic exploration, Darko used to publish up to 400 photos in Novosti, or fifteen of the thirty front pages.
He has no department. He is not dealing with his own stuff. He is not playing in a closed stadium. He doesn’t want to go to a VIP box. He hates lacquered shoes. He likes to see and photograph farmers’ toils, furrows, golden ears of wheat, bridge builders, playful actors, the colours of galleries, rocking boats, and passers-by on city squares.
That entire swirling world changes from frame to frame. It’s new. Unrepeatable. Original. Impressive.
His restlessness took him to Mount Athos, to the icy Volga, to rocky Dalmatia, and quite often where his—where our “soul’s roots” are—to Kosovo and Metohija. Fragments of that life, with distinct characters of all expressions, make one grandiose mural—exciting, touching, cosmopolitan, sometimes dramatic. The mural of life.
Dozet does not have the “eye of the camera”. He has eyes that see everything, while his camera is just an obedient machine. It seems as if he doesn’t even need hands to hold it. His fingers contain lasers—beams that fly precisely to the very heart of an object.
Darko Dozet is a fellow with a soul as wide as a golden Vojvodinian plain, and a grandmaster whose force, width, and strength of photography compete with the azure colours of the almighty Danube.
Manojlo Manjo Vukotić
Editor-in-Chief and General
Director of the Company
Novosti
(2000 – 2013)
