GRIOTS REPUBLIC - An Urban Black Travel Mag - Feb. 2016

©Miodrag Stojanovic
I spent most of my 22 days of travel time in the cities of
Havana and Trinidad. Both places are really great and of
course Trinidad is much smaller. I would wake up early in
the morning when no tourists were on the street and only
Cubans were active. The light is great in the morning and
the place looks much better with no tourists.
GR: How did the picture that is now our logo for Griots
Republic come about?
The picture of the old man in your GR logo was taken in the
Cuban city of Trinidad early in the morning. I remember like
it was yesterday. The old man was standing in front of his
home on a hilly street with no asphalt and smoking a selfmade
cigar. I said to him “hello” and started a conversation.
This is one of the most important things if you want to take
a good portrait of a stranger. First you have to talk with
them, to relax them and to gain their confidence. After that,
you can ask to shoot them and hope that you do it the right
way. The guy was very friendly and I asked him about his
cigar. I asked him where he bought it. He was smiling and
told me that he made it for himself. After that, I asked him if
I could take his portrait and he was ok with that. The light
was perfect and I just asked him to smoke his cigar. He was
so natural and I did a great job.
GR: Is there a particular photographer who has inspired
your work to date? In what other ways do you use your
photography skills?
In the past 10 years, one of my biggest inspirations has been
Annie Leibowitz. She is such a talented artist. Her work is so
easy, but so different. She uses great studio settings where
the main object is a canvas backdrop. This was inspiratio n
for me and a few years ago I founded a company called
Gravity Backdrops (www.gravitybackdrops.com) that
makes hand painted canvas backdrops with very reasonable
prices. The same quality is three times more expensive
elsewhere. Now my company is world famous with
hundreds of satisfied customers.
For the last 5 years I have been involved in photo schools in
Serbia and have a lot of students that are now p rofessional
photographers. At one point in time I worked for Playboy
and did a great story about our prime Minister where he
was talking about wine production and not politics. I also
did a story on a really special biker with an interesting life
story.