Born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1969, Sinisa Vlajkovic graduated with a Masters degree in Regional Planning from the University of Belgrade. By 1995 his interests had switched to graphic design, and by 1999 he moved to London to work as an Art Director in an advertising agency.
In 2002 he moved to Beirut, Lebanon where he continued his career in advertising and developed his photography skills. Since 2005 he lives in Dubai, UAE where he currently works as a Senior Art Director with Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency.
He is co-founder and contributor of Belgrade based cult magazine Asfalt and integrates his advertising work with independent photography projects.
Sinisa Vlajkovic
TEXTURES & SMELLS
Sinisa’s series of photographs from the Middle East engage the viewer through a palette of distinct features. One of the strongest is his skill in bringing textures to life, irrespective of the material. Plain concrete walls, the fake-leather wrapper for a steering wheel, beaten-up wooden door frame of a barber shop or a pile of rubble are all vivid, real, tangible. In a funny, but undeniable, way, tactile is immediately transformed into an even more powerful sense: that of a smell. Sinisa’s photographs, somehow, smell of a place they have been taken at. You can clearly feel it: the stale smell of a run-down taxi on a hot Lebanese day, the smell of old plaster or dry iron in one of many rubble piles, the smell of rusty metal poster panels perching above equally decrepit sun shades on a deserted, dusty beach. They are all there, powerful and immediate, filling your nostrils.