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May
2001
The
world’s media machine came to Sarajevo at the beginning
of the siege and left when it ended, claimed by other
wars and catastrophes. But the city’s history did
not begin and end with this war that claimed more than
10,000 dead and damaged or destroyed virtually every building
and every street.
The
scores of foreign correspondents that left Sarajevo also
left many questions unanswered: how did it feel to live,
day in and day out, inside a city and inside a war? One
of the photographers from Sarajevo, Kemal Hazic, says
that his photographs of fellow soldiers are "family
portraits taken by a family member". His story and
those told by other local photographers retain an element
of intimacy that other chronicles have not captured, and
represent the idea of multi-ethnic cooperation that has
been so threatened by the war in Bosnia.
Leslie
Fratkin, an American photographer who covered the war
in Sarajevo, understood that she would always remain an
outsider: "No matter how moved I was or how much
I cared, I knew that these stories were not mine to tell."
This
book, Sarajevo Self-Portrait, from which we excerpt
the work of three local photographers, is the result of
her collaboration with those who witnessed the war from
the inside, ensuring that their story will be seen.
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