From Publishers Weekly
Nine Bosnian photographers present 130 color and b & w photographs of their ravaged homeland, accompanied by statements about the process of documenting the war in Sarajevo Self-Portrait: The View from Inside, compiled by freelance photographer Leslie Fratkin. These war and postwar images will resonate particularly sharply with American viewers following September 11. Alongside his images of children playing with dolls and wooden guns in the devastated city of Zenica, Mladen Pikulic describes his decision to show "the normal life of children" during the war. Kemal Hadzic, a former Bosnian soldier, shows before-and-after images of 500-year-old Islamic architecture destroyed in the war, as well as portraits of his fellow soldiers; Danilo Krstanovic shows civilian victims lying where they fell in 1992 and people in food lines behind sniper screens.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In 1984, the multiethnic city of Sarajevo was proud host to the Winter Olympics. Less than a decade later, the world watched, with both horror and indifference, as its centuries-old churches and mosques were bombed into ruins and thousands of civilians perished. But what one often learns from television is the questionable truth of the moment as seen through the eyes of the visitor, armed with a foreign passport and a geographically bound perspective, who tours troubled spots to show rather than to comprehend. The world rarely saw how many Sarajevans snubbed shallow patriotic ideologies and embraced the challenge of artistic creation in the most vicious circumstances, both as a way of documenting and of communicating the unspeakable. A stroll through the peaceful Sarajevo today affirms the city's intrinsically imaginative character: beautifully carved gun shells, for example, are sold as souvenirs rather than discarded as painful war residue. This book is a sincere attempt to celebrate Sarajevo as a city of gifted artists. The nine native photographers and their disturbing yet arresting images embody what Bosnia and its capital once represented: a religious and ethnic harmony, not just diversity. Despite the weakly translated essays with histrionic overtones that introduce each photographer, this kind of genuine and unrehearsed photography educates more convincingly and enduringly than words ever could. Mirela Roncevic, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
