Kovacevic says, “That day I went out by curiosity and who knows maybe some kind of intuition led me to the town fair of modest Cerro de León, only a few miles away from the shooting of Dana Rotberg’s Otilia Rauda, for which I had come to Mexico. Friendly atmosphere, locals’ faces bubbling with excitement, there was plenty of mezcal (a national drink), final preparations for the most expected event of the day: the horse race. I just felt at ease among those simple and caring villagers. I had escaped the kingdom of touristy clichés or imageries. As the race got closer, I was already behind the gate, a simple string of iron separating the scratched racetrack from the seats for the audience, with my camera focused on the spot each horse had to pass by… A horse’s life was passing away painfully in front of the audience in dead silence. The dying horse was hectic in a deep and painful sigh until the death rattle came from the deepest of its soul; its eyes became glazed more and more…. With my camera, I grasped every sequence of the horse’s death: the three gunshots, the horse’s corpse being put away in the wasteland nearby, picked up by the backhoe, and buried in the local waste collection site. Years after I left besieged and ravaged Sarajevo; it was the first time I felt so overwhelmed again. The images of the torn corpses of my fellow citizens and the pains of the wounded flowed back to my mind; the death rattle of the dying rushed back to my ears. Once more I could tell with the eye of my camera that life is on a razor’s edge. A horse’s life, a man’s life, just the same. That event stuck in my head like a series of pictures and this is why I chose to show them as they followed on from each other. If only I had dreamt them, as in a movie.”
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
