When it comes to street photography, Boogie is the absolute man. Born in Serbia and a resident while the war basically turned the country to shit, Boogie documented the people, landscape, and tension that unfolded around him. After hotfooting it to the US, he continued to shoot what he saw, which included neo-Nazi skinheads, Brazilian transvestites, and dealers and junkies alike. Besides all that, his general New York street photography is undoubtedly some of the best in a massively over-saturated arena, where people seem to have forgotten that just taking a black and white photo in New York doesn’t necessarily mean it’s anything worth looking at. Boogie just got back from a trip to Jamaica where he was shooting gangsters, graves, and locals, so I had a chat with him about his career so far.
VICE: You started out taking photos during the Serbian civil war, right? Was that for some sort of cathartic reason, or did you just randomly pick up a camera at that point?
Boogie: Yeah, I started taking pictures in 1993 when my country, Serbia, was under UN economic sanctions. The suffering around me was tremendous because sanctions never affect those they are supposedly targeting – they affect ordinary people, babies, and the elderly especially, while those in power only get richer. Suicide rates went through the roof and were never released because people were basically committing suicide to avoid starving to death. Babies were dying in the hospitals because of the lack of medicines. People were coming back from the front lines half-insane. I think I picked up a camera to preserve my sanity.
So how did you end up in the States during all of that?
I arrived in New York in 1998 after winning the US government Green Card lottery. I never planned to come, but one night I was drinking with a couple of friends and we all applied just for the hell of it and I won.
So, did you start shooting all the photos from It’s All Good as soon as you arrived?
No, all the photos from It’s All Good were taken between 2003 and 2006. I lived in Williamsburg at the time and was really bored, nothing inspired me to shoot – hipsters are not my favorite subject – so I started taking walks deeper and deeper into Bushwick and Bed-Stuy. On one of the trips, I was hanging out with some homeless people and one of the girls, who was a crackhead, invited me to take photos of her and her girlfriend smoking crack. The next thing you know, I was standing on their bathtub taking photos of the girl shooting up, while her kids were banging at the door asking for help with their homework. Then I spent the next couple of months going there all the time and hanging out with drug addicts.
Did that affect you at all?
Yeah, after a while it got me kind of depressed, so I decided to take a break and try to get some photos of gangs in the nearby projects. On one of my walks in the projects some gangsters approached me, we started talking and, since I’m a good guy, they let me take their pictures. A couple of weeks later they asked me to take pictures of them with guns, which was a dream come true. I found myself in the midst of madness, going deeper and deeper.
Wasn’t it kinda worrying being around all those gangsters? Did anything happen while you were shooting that made you think, ‘I need to get out of here’?
Oh yeah, I would get worried from time to time and whenever my gut instinct told me to get the fuck out of there, I did. After getting to know the gang members better, I started going to the projects at night and that was amazing. I was definitely the only white guy in the area. I remember realizing at that point that it wasn’t only about taking pictures, it was more about the experience – stories to tell to your grandkids. I became a fly on the wall. They would discuss their gang business in front of me – who they were gonna hit, what they were gonna do – so I knew I was in too deep and it was time to go back to shooting junkies. So basically I went back and forth between shooting junkies and gangsters.
Crazy. São Paulo was your next major project, right? What is it that draws you to the impoverished areas that you tend to shoot?
Well, before going to São Paulo, I’d done several months of commercial work. I was doing really well financially and selling prints etc. and that freaked me out. It was like, ‘What the fuck? Now you’re a hot shit advertising photographer or something?’ So I called my travel agent, booked a ticket for São Paulo, and went there for a week. I just needed to feel some realness again. I’m not sure what draws me to the impoverished areas, though. Maybe my upbringing plays a role in that? I started doing photography when everything around me was falling apart, there was no end in sight to all the darkness and I think it stuck with me. I think it’s just the way I see things.
Do you usually get involved with local culture and get caught up in it all while you’re shooting?
Yeah, I definitely like getting to know locals and their culture. It’s priceless to see how different people live. Although, unfortunately, sometimes there’s just not enough time for it. I just go in and shoot the shit out of what I see. I’m aware that that’s just the surface, but usually our first impressions are the right ones.
Which place, out of all your travels, has made the biggest impression on you?
I just came back from Kingston, Jamaica, a couple of weeks ago, and it’s THE most insane place I’ve ever been to. Woah, ha ha. I went there twice in two months and I can’t get it out of my head.
Yeah, all those photos are amazing. What’s the deal with the guy in the mask holding the gun?
Oh, the Kingston gangsters use masks like that to scare victims before shooting them.
Fuck.
Yeah, man. The police in Kingston are very brutal. If they catch you with a gun they’ll most likely just kill you on the spot without making an arrest. So, the fact that these guys let me shoot them with their guns meant big respect.
You must just have a way with gangsters, I guess. What did you think of all the skin bleaching going on there, too?
Man, that’s just SICK. Also, their skin doesn’t really get lighter, it just goes red. Sick, sick, sick.
How do you find going from stuff like that to shooting commercial work?
Personal work is just what I do every day, you know? I can’t go a day without firing a couple of shots. I shoot because I have to, it’s not about money, but I think the commercial work I get is because of my personal work.
Do you skate? Because you’ve done a fair bit of skate related stuff.
Nope, I’ve never skated, although, I have a lot of respect for it. I remember wanting a skateboard as a kid, but my parents didn’t wanna get me one. Shit.
Ah, lame. Here’s a biggie to round up: what have you learned about the world so far from taking photos and going to all the places you’ve been?
Man, the older I get, the less I know and understand. Not many things make sense, especially right now. I realized that no matter how we look, where we live, what we do, we are all the same. It’s the governments that are trying to divide us and play us against each other, BUT, as Travis Bickle once said, “Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.”
JAMIE CLIFTON
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