Dragana Jurišić, 'The Last Balkan Cowboy'

The Last Balkan Cowboy is a long-term project by Dragana Jurišić that follows the footsteps of cult Yugoslavian film director, Hari Džekson. Renowned for his interpretation of Wild West genre archetypes, Džekson lived a cowboy fantasy inspired by the rugged landscapes around Bijeljina in present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. Using local people as his crew and cast, Džekson conjured worlds far from his reality and brought together people of different ethnic backgrounds, whom the Yugoslav Wars would bitterly divide.

This exhibition precedes a feature-length documentary on Džekson directed by Jurišić, which will premiere later in 2026. The photographs were made during three cross-country trips throughout 2024-2025 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia in between location scouting, research and filming. Following a trail of rumours and local folklore, Jurišić tracked down people who were close to Džekson, simultaneously tracing his life and disappearance in parallel with the fragmentation of the Balkan states. Her photographs draw on the practice of shooting production stills; instead of focussing on the critical moment of action, her approach captures actors relaxing between takes, landscapes that appear to exist outside of a fixed time period, and the aftermath of a fragmented nation. The exhibition presents itself as a cinematic panorama of photographs referencing the Western landscape’s horizon line; a symbol of opportunity and new beginnings. Resisting an urge to remain rooted in an era or pre-conceptions of a place and its characteristics, Jurišić presents a disjointed and incomplete storyboard rather than attempting to generalise or flatten a collection of experiences.