The social life of a migrant photo archive: Jovan Ritopečki’s images of Yugoslav workers in Austria
This paper examines the photographic archive of Yugoslav photojournalist Jovan Ritopečki (1923–1989), who documented the lives of Yugoslav migrant workers in Austria from the 1970s until his death in 1989. Despite the depth and uniqueness of his work, Ritopečki’s photographs and archive have remained largely invisible within public institutions and historical scholarship. The paper explores how shifting social, political, and curatorial frameworks have influenced the belated recognition of Ritopečki’s work. It analyzes his dual position as a press photographer with media connections and as a member of the Yugoslav migrant community, highlighting how this shaped the production, circulation, and historical impact of his images. Drawing on a corpus of 31 large-format prints from his estate, the paper investigates how his images construct Yugoslav migrant experiences, paying particular attention to their formal strategies and “social life” across different sites of circulation. Ultimately, the paper situates Ritopečki’s archive within broader debates on migration, memory, and archival visibility in Austria and beyond, exemplifying how migrant photo archives move from community-based memorial practices into institutionalized settings of cultural memory.
Vida Bakondy
Vida Bakondy studied History, Social and Cultural Anthropology, International Development, Gender Studies, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian at the University of Vienna (MA 2005, PhD 2015). She is currently research associate in the Balkan Studies Research Unit at the Austrian Academy of Science and at the Mauthausen Memorial. Her research interests are Austrian contemporary history with a transnational focus on former Yugoslavia, migration and exile, the postwar legacy of National Socialism, visual studies, history of photographic practices, biographical research.