ZB Photos

Zoran Bozicevic photo archive

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Michael Jordan of the Washington Wizards plays the season opener game vs. Toronto Raptors in Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Canada, Wednesday, October 30, 2002. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

When AFP news agency asked me to shoot the great Michael Jordan, how could I refuse? It was his third comeback from retirement and, sadly, though we didn’t know it then, the first game of his last-ever NBA season. Needless to say, shooting the living legend at his game was a rare privilege.

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Jimmy Hung of Toronto ETF unit gets ready for sniper rifle target shooting. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

On a grey October morning in 2002 I went to Toronto ETF (Emergency Task Force) unit’s target practice. I always wanted to show a face behind the sniper. During the war, however, it was wise to stay behind the guy with a gun, not in front of it, so I never took the picture I imagined. Until that morning. In this peacetime situation, officer Jimmy Hung was game to let me take that elusive shot. After going through a thorough check to make sure the rifle was not loaded, I was allowed to get a look from the target’s perspective.

Unbeknownst to me, one of the police officers took a picture of the scene:

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Sam Roberts on the stage at Olympic Island open air concert Saturday, August 7, 2004. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

Frankly, there’s no special story behind this picture. If I’m completely honest, I don’t even remember shooting Sam Roberts, but, going through my stacks of archival CDs, I found this picture from 2004. His pose and especially his facial expression were too good to be left buried under sands of time.

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Canadian singer Nelly Furtado at her hotel room in Toronto’s Cambridge Suites Hotel, October 2000. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

I was sent to the hotel to take pictures of a young up-and-coming pop star of whom I never heard before that night. On a cold October evening in Toronto, when one could already smell the snow in the air, I walked to the room and was let in by her PR people. Nelly was young, shy, pretty and ready to take the world by its horns. The room was warm and she wore, appropriately, a sleeveless shirt. Since, as a newspaper photographer, I never knew where will the work day take me, I was dressed for the weather, warm sweater, jacket and such. As a result, I was sweating while trying to get Nelly to look casual and relaxed. In a dull hotel room with only a sofa and a writing desk in the corner, there wasn’t much to be done creatively. Nelly saw me looking around, trying to do something different, and asked if I’d like to shoot a few poses outside on the balcony. I happily agreed.

She stepped outside in her sleeveless shirt and braved the weather for the next few minutes, while I tried - and failed - to work some magic. It was already dark, the light through the window wasn’t bright enough for a proper shot, and when I added flash, it completely killed the atmosphere, as I worried it might. Poor Nelly was freezing for nothing, but she was a true Canadian girl and didn’t complain. Finally, when she hugged herself, I realized that, if she ended up in a hospital with pneumonia, it will be my fault. I suggested we returned back inside and she accepted with a grateful smile.

At the end, the picture that worked the best was this one on the sofa.

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Mostar territorial defence soldiers provide cover for a girl and an elderly woman to run into shelter across the sniper alley in downtown Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina, April 1992. The two were trapped between the houses, pinned in by sniper fire and called for help. Both made it safely to a shelter near by.

On a calm day in war-torn downtown Mostar I was chatting with a group of Territorial Defence soldiers, standing in passage which went though a building at the very edge of the old town. I have just arrived with a friend photographer and we were trying to get the feel of the situation. Sporadic gunshots echoed in irregular intervals through mostly empty streets, but no one paid them much attention. Suddenly, screams for help reverberated following a series of shots. They were very loud, which meant they were coming from somewhere near by. A soldier from our group risked a dive across the street for a better look. He called back saying there are people trapped between the houses just down the street. The rest of the group tossed their cigarettes, brandished their AK-47s and without much fuss slid along the walls toward the voices, hurrying only when exposed to the upper end of the street. Without even asking, we went along, hugging the wall on the side. Just as we were nearing the gap between the houses where people were trapped, a few gunshots rang followed by the ominous angry buzz of a bullet flying by. I jumped in the nearest doorframe and flattened myself on the threshold. My friend did the same one door down from me.

A game of cat and mouse - or, rather, mice - ensued. At first the soldiers we came with couldn’t locate the position of the sniper, so they decided to move around and draw fire. This risky game paid off. After a few rounds ricocheted from the pavement near a large soldier who stood an arm’s length from my hiding place, he pointed ahead and shouted the description of the house to the others. A soldier standing with the civilians, which we now saw were a young girl and a woman, warned them to run on his sign. Someone fired a few rounds toward the sniper’s position and soldier gave the sign. The girl went first running to the house behind my hiding place. I leaned out long enough for a few quick photos. As the girl passed, a few more shots rang and I pulled back. The old woman shuffled after the girl, swearing under her breath.

With them safely sheltered, we ran back the way we came. For a while the sniper amused himself shooting at the wall behind which we sat chatting with soldiers. We were waiting for the bullets to stop, so we could run back down the street and around the corner where we left our car. We were going to wait the sniper out, or stay until dark, but he had other plans. A louder shot was followed by an explosion in the middle of the street right in front of our hiding passage. Rocks and dust peppered us. A man sitting closest to the street cried with pain and clutched an arm bleeding with a shrapnel wound.

“Tromblon!” soldiers yelled and pulled farther back from the street. Tromblon was a rifle grenade launcher, which meant the frustrated sniper was now lobbing grenades at us. Another grenade exploded somewhere on the street, then the bullets continued their angry toc-toc at the other side of the wall. Almost an hour later it still went on, but the pause between the shots was getting longer. I was antsy to get back to the hotel and transmit my pictures. Finally, two soldiers who also had enough, offered to take me and friend back to our car. Well, “take” is a deceiving expression. What they suggested was to follow them. One of the soldiers was going to run first, the other last. When he goes, he said, the sniper will know we are moving and will expect another. He told us not to run in the same interval one after another, but to keep him guessing. Also, not to run in the straight line. Then he smiled, winked and disappeared down the street. Nothing happened. My friend went next. Again, all was quiet. The second soldier put a hand on my shoulder and made me pause for a few minutes. Then I got the “good to go” pat and off I went.

I don’t remember if I ran in straight line. I only know that this 50-ish meters were the longest run in my life. Even though everybody who saw me said I was flying, my legs felt made of concrete and slow like hell. As I rounded the corner, my buddy snapped a picture of me coming into safety. That’s the picture below, with obvious terror on my face.

Only when the second soldier also rounded the corner did the sniper wake up and fired a shot down empty street.

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Ricky Martin — remember him? At the height of his career in July 2003 he came to Toronto to promote his new album, meet the fans and sign autographs. Here he is at the Sherway Gardens shopping mall doing his publicity stunt. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

I must admit, he charmed not only the fans, but me as well. He was funny, personable, amenable to everything the photographers asked him to do, and above all he was friendly and down to earth. Uncharacteristic for a star of his calibre.

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Cher performs during the Halloween concert in Toronto, October 31, 2003. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

As usually, we were only allowed to photograph the first three songs. Cher appeared as a witch, then ditched the cloak and the witch-hat and revealed the spidery outfit. What clings to memory from that night was not only Cher, but also the audience - everybody in the crowd wore a Halloween costume and mask, so Cher was performing to the crowd of ghouls, witches, trolls, Harry Potters, and every other fictional character one can think of. It was a surreal experience!

Unfortunately, the photo position was at the back of the auditorium, and I could only shoot with a long lens from afar. There was no chance to shoot the crowd, except as a mass of weirdly shaped silhouettes backlit by the stage light.

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David Segui of Toronto Blue Jays breaks his bat with the ball still on it, Monday, September 13, 1999. The game was Toronto Blue Jays vs New York Yankees. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

This was shot on film, so there was no way to see for certain if I had the moment when the bat broke. I had a feeling that I managed to capture it, but until the film was processed, there was no way to tell. Then, as a sweet bonus, I found that not only did I catch the bat-breaking moment, but I still had the ball touching the broken bat while it flew away.

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Muhammad Ali greets the crowd in Toronto’s Skydome, October 2002. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

This photo may not be technically or composition-wise a great shot, but the man in it certainly is. Muhammad Ali, arguably the greatest boxer of all times, was also my childhood hero. Even in his later days and from a great distance, for the kid in me it was a dream come true to have a chance to take this picture.

The only challenge was that we were kept quite far away from Ali. I had to shoot with 400mm lens (equivalent to 8x zoom) in poor lighting. To make matters worse, Ali was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which made it even more challenging to get a steady shot.

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An old woman walks through the downtown Grozny searching for something to eat or items she can use. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

In August 1996, when the armed conflict in the Balkans settled into a restive cease fire, I was sent to cover the war in Chechnya, southern Russia. Even though I covered the war in the Balkans for over 5 years by then, the amount of firepower and devastation inflicted on Chechen capital Grozny was something I have never seen before. During a lull in fighting on a hot summer day I found myself in the downtown Grozny. An old granny with kind, wrinkled face and head wrapped in a blood-red kerchief emerged between the buildings and started rummaging in the heaps of rubble and garbage piled high on the sidewalk. She saw me standing there with cameras on my shoulders and smiled, saying something I didn’t understand. I smiled back and waved. Then she bent and from the heap that towered over her pulled an army boot. Her face lit up. She turned it in hands, then looked in it, frowned, and shook something out of the boot. Charred toes tumbled out. Unfazed, she held it next to her slippered foot, then shook her head realizing it was much too big. She tossed it back on the heap and continued walking down the street between destroyed buildings with market stalls and kiosks and I took this picture.

I took some pictures earlier of her going through the rubble too, but they were not really telling the story. And, I didn’t quite realize what was it that she had shaken out of the boot until she moved on and I went over to check. Then my stomach did a flip.

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Avril Lavigne performed at Much Music Video Awards in June 2003.

I was at the event mostly to send pictures of 3 other photographers who had access to the stage. Busy in the media room I got a call from one of the guys saying he missed Avril Lavigne and she’s about to go on the main stage while he’s stuck at another one. Avril was one of the biggest young stars of Canadian popular music. Although another photographer was waiting to shoot the interview with her behind the stage, we couldn’t miss her performance. I grabbed my camera and ran out of the media room. My spot was at the back of the Much Music TV parking lot where the main stage was based, and to the side. It wasn’t ideal; I was shooting through metal construction that held lights and over the crowd. Worse, I arrived as she was ending her set. This is the shot I got. At least we had her performance. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

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In the early days of the war in Croatia in 1991 a police station in the town of Pakrac, east of Zagreb, was attacked over night. The following morning the whole area was teeming with police and military units. I saw this unit combing the area for possible signs of attackers. The tension and weariness was written on their faces. We shot black and white those days, as the newspaper I worked for had no colour pages (yet). Lack of colour attributed to the tense mood of the picture and conveyed silent resolve of the soldiers. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

That’s probably why, without my knowledge, it somehow ended on a poster “Hrvatska vas zove” calling for volunteers to join the defence of Croatia. I was working for Vecernji List, the largest daily newspaper at the time. The paper often gave copies of our photographs to various governmental and media organizations for documentation and publication. Apparently, this was the first war poster of Croatian war and is entered in several museums dealing with the war topics. It even featured in a few movies - Harrison’s Flowers being one of them.

In the story of that poster I’m usually mentioned somewhere in the footnote, while the credit was given to the designer.

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Working for a Toronto daily newspaper creates constant demand for fresh photos of the city’s landmarks. They are used (much too often, in my opinion) to illustrate a story for which there was no relevant pictures.

One slow news night in October 2002 I cruised through downtown Toronto and did just that - took night pictures of the recognizable landmarks. And, nothing is more recognizable for Toronto than CN Tower and Skydome. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

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Moment of explosion in an army warehouse in Sesvete, near Zagreb, in April 1994. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

In April 1994 the Associated Press office in Zagreb got a call about thick smoke coming from an army base in Sesvete near Zagreb, Croatia. The base, which was previously used for decades by Yugoslav Army (JNA), for the last two years was securely in Croatian Army’s hands. This far from the front line it couldn’t have been an enemy attack. Since we couldn’t get information about the origin of the smoke I grabbed my cameras and went to investigate. I was turned away at a military checkpoint and couldn’t get closer to the base, so I scouted the tallest apartments building in the area and went door-knocking on the top floor. A nice young couple let me take a look from their balcony. Sure enough, the smoke was still visible from the forest on the base. As I aimed my lens on it, a deep rumble emanated from the direction of the smoke. It grew in volume and soon I could feel it tremble through my whole body. It felt, I imagine, like a sleeping volcano waking with a thunder. And then the thunder came, a wave of hot air hit me and, on an instinct, I pressed the shutter just as a massive ball of fire burst up. A series of explosions followed. Strange objects fell from the sky - ammunition boxes full of smouldering rounds, loose bullets, some empty casings and even grenades!

Later we found out that an ammunition warehouse on the base caught fire and did exactly what it does in the movies - exploded! Five soldiers were killed on the base in the accident, but miraculously, there were no civilian casualties.

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Luka Modrić plays for Dinamo Zagreb vs. Glasgow Rangers during an exhibition match in Toronto in 2005. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

In 2005 I was sent to cover an exhibition soccer match Dinamo Zagreb vs. Glasgow Rangers in Toronto. I didn’t really follow soccer at the time and those guys playing were unknown to me. Imagine my surprise when, going through old pictures, I found young Luka Modric playing for the Zagreb’s side. He, of course, went on to become one of the best players in the world, and I was blissfully unaware that I photographed him when he was still young up-and-coming player.

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Tightrope walker Jay Cochrane walks high above the ground of the Exhibition Place in Toronto in August 2003. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

One day during the National Exhibition in 2003 my editor told me to go to the EX and get a shot of a tightrope walker Jay Cochrane. They were waiting for me at the fair to take me to the spot, he said. He neglected to mention that “the spot” was way above the ground level. I was supposed to be on a tiny platform where, if I sat, my legs would dangle some 100+ ft above the ground. So, when I arrived, they strapped me into a harness and sent me up the ladder. It happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to think, let alone protest. As I climbed up, the whole platform swayed in the wind so much it made me dizzy, but when it all settled, I had a once-in-a-lifetime view. Looking at the picture all these years later, I’m glad I did it. Here’s Jay as he walks the 800ft long, 200ft high tight rope at Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, Canada, Wednesday, August 27, 2003. Cochrane act was a part of the 125th annual fair, commonly known as "the EX".

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Sometimes the weather creates a picture. On an October morning in 2003, on the way to work I noticed the towers in North York area of Toronto “float” above the layer of fog which was being burned off by the morning sun, so I stopped on the overpass to snap a photo. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)