Jadran Lazić: On the Red Carpet

EXHIBITION AT THE LJUBLJANA CASTLE

Jadran Lazić, the first so-called Yugoslav paparazzi, began his career in 1971 by photographing the football team Hajduk in his native Split and continued with Charlotte Rampling in Paris. He achieved international fame when, despite restricted access, he managed to take a close-up photograph of the deceased Soviet President Brezhnev at his funeral, which was later chosen by Newsweek as the photograph of the year.
 
It can be said that there are no Hollywood stars and celebrities of the 1970s and 1980s who were not captured by Lazić’s lens, from Yugoslavian actors Dino Dvornik, Miša Kovač, Suzana Mančić, Dražen Petrović and many others, to Jodie Foster (whom Lazić even brought to Hvar as a teenager), Gillian Anderson, Sylvester Stallone, Roman Polanski, Robert De Niro, Jamie Foxx, Abu Abbas, Johnny Depp, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Elizabeth Taylor, David Bowie, Bianca Jagger, Kirk Douglas, Sigourney Weaver, Jack Nicholson, Carlo Ponti, Sofia Loren, Marlon Brando, Richard Gere, and many others. Lazić’s photographs of these celebrities are collected in a rich two-part monograph entitled Jadran Lazić, 50 Years of Photography, published by HAA from Zagreb. The superb photographs are enhanced by Lazić’s own notes, which reveal the fascinating behind-the-scenes stories associated with each shot.

In 2021, upon the publication of the opulent two-part monograph, which presents Lazić’s work on more than 900 pages, an exhibition was presented at Galerija Fotografija. This time, in the beautiful surroundings of the Ljubljana Castle, Lazić presents himself with an even more extensive selection of photographs taken in all corners of the world during his 50-year career.

Curator of the exhibition: Barbara Čeferin