Bilder von Frieden und Krieg betrachten. Die visuelle Darstellung von Bosnien und Herzegowina
Looking at War and Peace – The Visual Representation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Summary/Abstract: Responding to the crisis in photojournalism, many photographers during the wars in former Yugoslavia developed alternative photographic approaches to capture the complexity of the wars more adequately than conventional photojournalism seemed capable of doing. In this article, we present a typology of these alternative photographies. We discuss forensic photography, aftermath photography, post-conflict and peace photography as well as participatory photography both in generic terms and in the specific Bosnian context. Following this typology, we introduce one specific photojournalistic project, Gilles Peresses and Fred Ritchin’s “Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace”. This project integrated several aspects of the new photographies into a coherent and convincing approach. We then discuss it in terms of interactivity and narrative openness. Necessarily limited by the technological standards of the time, this project can be seen as an important precursor to current photojournalistic approaches in search of adequate representations of the ongoing messiness and institutionalized instability in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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