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Safet Zuna in Jajce, Bosnia November 2003. He appears in the old photograph he is holding, which was taken 33 years earlier at the same weekly market during my initial trip to the Balkans.
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Project Summary
More than thirty years ago I traveled through Bosnia in a VW Bus that served as home and darkroom. I found myself deeply drawn to the Bosnian people, the landscape and the culture.
My first photographs were taken during a time of peace. When war broke out, I read accounts of violence spreading into towns and cities where I had walked and photographed. As news reports worsened, the faces of adults and children from that first trip haunted my thoughts. I began making prints of old negatives for a benefit event in my community to help bring war-displaced Bosnian students to schools in the United States. Printing and viewing those images had an enormous impact on me, and was the beginning of my re-connection to Bosnia, and later to Kosovo.
I returned in 2003 to a country still recovering from all the tragedy of war. I brought photographs from the original trip, along with a film-based camera and a digital audio recorder. I also took a simple digital camera with a portable printer, to make prints for people as I again visited their towns. I wanted to share the old photographs with those for whom they would have meaning. And I felt compelled to reach out at a time when my own country has become more isolated from the international community.
The spirit and resilience of the Bosnian people now compelled my photographic attention, as well as all they had suffered. I took many photographs and made audio recordings. The people I met invited me into their midst, shared coffee, life stories, kindness and courage. In some cases, I was able to find the very same people and places I had photographed 33 years ago.
I am currently working on a book about this search for people and places not forgotten. It is an exploration of the ways that photography creates a universal language that moves beyond time. The power of images can connect people across borders and back to their own threatened place and culture. It’s a story about war and peace and the deep sustaining nature of the human spirit. For me, it is a reminder of our common humanity. How do we move past being strangers in this world? What can link us together in friendship as other forces try to push us apart? These are questions that inspired my trip, my photographs, and this project.
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Vernes (Jef) and his daughter Nadja in Jajce, Bosnia November 2003. Vernes was one of the children originally photographed in 1970, and located on my return visit.
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Project Update
I am delighted that Dewi Lewis Publishing in Stockport, England has accepted Pictures Without Borders for publication in hardcover in the fall of 2005. The company is recognized as one of the leading international photographic publishers. Visit their website at www.dewilewispublishing.com
A Pictures Without Borders page is archived on the website of the
Academy of Bosnia and Hercegovina: http://academybh.org/archive.htm
For updates about the Pictures Without Borders book project and accompanying presentations, please visit the project website at:
www.pictureswithoutborders.com
Full title: Pictures Without Borders: Bosnia Revisited
ISBN #: 1-904587-20-8
Hardcover, 85 duotone photographs, 136 pages
Price: $ 30.00
Available mid-November 2005
Inquire at your favorite bookstore
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