Born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia, Boogie began documenting rebellion and unrest during the Civil War that ravaged his country during the 1990s.

Upon moving to New York in 1998, he has continued to produce raw, often in-your-face documentation of urban landscapes and subjects. We were fortunate to receive this photograph as a donation for our 15th Anniversary Benefit Art Auction.

Elise Hennigan: The photo that you donated for the Juxtapoz Art Auction from your Istanbul series is so striking. How did you happen upon this scene?

Boogie: I was just walking through a Kurdish neighborhood in Istanbul and noticed the kid playing in a building entrance. Istanbul is an amazing city, many different neighborhoods, different kinds of people. In the neighborhood where I took this shot most people don't even speak Turkish, only Arabic. I know there are tensions between Kurds and Turks, but wherever I went people were great to me. And being from Serbia, I grew up not liking Turks (we were occupied by the Turkish Empire for 500 years) but the city and it's people blew me away.

It’s always startling how close you are able to get to your subjects, especially when there is present danger…any tactics you use to get up in the action?

There are no recipes for that. But I never really look for weird situations, somehow they just come to me, they present themselves. maybe the key is to be relaxed and honest, and not to try too hard.

I have seen a few of your color photographs circulating recently. Is this a break from your use of black and white or just experimentation?

A couple of months ago while walking around the neighborhood I just started seeing color images all around me ... I went back home and loaded some color film, and I went with it.  It's not a break, it's not the experimentation, it's just a continuation of my work. Color or black and white, it's still me. I don't limit myself and think too much about what people expect from me, I follow my gut and shoot whatever I feel like. So after years of shooting only b&w I discovered color and it feels great, it's like seeing the world with different eyes.

Do you ever feel any pressure to move towards shooting digital?

Not at all. Whoever I do work for, accepts my way of working, and it's film only. I don't even own a digital camera.

Where in the world are you now? What do you have planned for the rest of 2009?

I'm right here in nyc, working a lot. I plan to set up a studio in Belgrade, Serbia and spend some more time there, shooting in the region.

Boogie has a great website where he uploads one new photo a day, you can check that out here.

Check out more info on all participating artists at: www.juxtapoz.com/auction

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