Belgrade – Fire at the Sava Centar Construction Site, May 13, 1978

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Before becoming a professional photojournalist, I spent every free weekend photographing landscapes outside the city. On Saturday, May 13, while photographing a ravine near Batajnica along the Danube, I noticed thick black smoke rising over Belgrade—a clear sign that a major fire had broken out somewhere in the city.
As I drove closer, the smoke grew denser, covering an ever larger portion of the sky. It soon became clear that it was coming from the construction site of Sava Centar, the massive cultural and congress complex often referred to by its first director, Miloje Popović, as the “temple of socialism.”
The date itself was striking: May 13, formerly celebrated as Security Day, marking the founding of OZNA, the post-war Yugoslav security service. For a moment, the thought crossed my mind that the fire might not be accidental.
I stopped by the roadside and made this photograph. Shortly afterward, two police officers approached and asked for identification. As was common at the time, I showed my student ID from the Faculty of Applied Arts, which I routinely carried because photographers were frequently stopped in socialist Yugoslavia. On this occasion, however, it made no difference.
They began looking for handcuffs, but all were already in use—numerous photojournalists and civilians with cameras were being detained nearby. One officer then ordered me to hold onto the door handle of their police car and not move. I complied.
The moment they ran toward another person with a camera and disappeared into the crowd, I let go of the handle, slipped back into my car, and drove away.