The Colour Beneath the Grey is a photobook by photographer Katerina Kouzmitcheva, published in 2026 in collaboration with the Polish Institute in Belgrade.

The project is dedicated to Belgrade and explores the relationship between people and a city shaped by modernist heritage and decades of social transformation. At the center of the book are concrete facades, courtyards, staircases, passages and residential blocks as spaces of everyday life. The author presents the urban environment not as a monument to the past, but as a living stage where human presence continuously reshapes space and gives it new meaning.

The title refers not to literal color, but to the inner energy of the city — the people, gestures, glances and encounters that emerge beneath the outward greyness of architecture. Through Belgrade, the author reflects on memory, urban transformation and the hidden beauty of everyday life.

For this edition, Serbian writer Danica Vukićević contributed a specially commissioned essay that became an important part of the book. In her text, she describes Belgrade as a city of concrete, memory and imperfection, where cracks, traces of time, courtyards and facades become carriers of life and history. Her voice enters into dialogue with the photographs, revealing the poetic dimension of urban reality.

Softcover with flaps
20 × 23.8 cm
104 pages, 90 illustrations
Published by Polish Institute in Belgrade
Edition of 150 copies
Belgrade, 2026 
ISBN: 978-86-909112-0-2

Flip-through video: youtu.be/aPjInzSskjk