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Pictures without Borders: Bosnia Revisited

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The cliché of course is that the photographer is the ultimate thief of souls, but in the case of PICTURES WITHOUT BORDERS, Steven Horn turns that cliché on its head. In 1970, Horn traveled to Yugoslavia the way any college student in his right mind would travel - in a VW Bus with a darkroom set up in the back. After taking hundreds of photographs of the country's landscape, architecture and people - especially children - he returned to the States to resume his studies.

Thirty years later, with those same photographs in his pack, Horn returned to Bosnia to reconnect with the faces and places he'd photographed. With local guides and some luck, he found many of the same "children" that populated his prints, and his reunion with them - and their children! - forms the heart of this book. But this is not just a work of nostalgia; this is a book of war as well, for in the intervening years the Balkans War of the 1990s ravaged the region. "So all those children who were in the picture a long time ago," one man tells Steve, "every one of them faced ordeals in the war...and each has their story about the war time and it is not a favorable story."

Not only did Horn bring his 1970 photographs back to the children he could track down (in many cases, his photos were the only childhood images they now possess), he also delivered dozens of his prints of buildings that were destroyed in the war to the Natural History Museum in Travnik, Bosnia - many of which are now the only pre-war photographs of their respective buildings in existence.

While there are many stirring images throughout the book, the standout is the cover photograph (the Amazon reproduction here does not do it justice). It's a great example of both Horn's eye as well as the aesthetic power of photography. Is the image that of a Serb or Muslim cemetery? (A life and death question for many, and the answer could reveal Horn's political intent.) Does the photograph show headstones growing into the city, or does it document the city's neighborhoods growing into the cemetery? In other words, is the city dying, or is it finally conquering death? Smartly, Horn titled the photograph simply "Sarajevo," leaving any interpretation for us.

While one might have hoped for a more consistent and seamless integration of the text in the book with the images, and perhaps more circumstantial background for some of the 1970 photographs, PICTURES WITHOUT BORDERS testifies to the tremendous impact an artist can have on a community and its people.

Visiting Bosnia as a young photographer more than thirty years ago, Steve Horn was charmed by the congenial Bosnians, their beautiful landscape, and their cultural heritage. When the Balkan War broke out in 1992, he could hardly believe the reports of unbridled cruelty and destruction in that same country. More than thirty years afterward, Horn returned to the Balkans to photograph the aftermath of war and listen to the stories of the survivors. Especially touching are his interviews with some of the same people he photographed as children in a time of peace. Essays set the context for the eloquent black and white photographs.