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Preserving Serbia’s peppery tradition

Mira Kostic threads red peppers on a string in Donja Lokošnica, a village in the valley of the South Morava River. Around 250 of the village’s 280 families grow peppers for the annual paprika harvest, producing around 500 tons of the piquant powder each year. But the tradition is slowly waning. With more and more youngsters leaving the area, these days it falls to the older generation to keep this tradition going, and so I felt compelled to preserve it through portraits like these.