In his essay the beginning of Blood and Honey, David Reiff writes, “But it is almost unimaginable that there could be more than one appropriate interpretation of a Ron Haviv picture”. To Reiff, the photo “is the face of ethnic cleansing. The photograph is also almost a parable for what took place in Bosnia, which was not war in any traditional sense but slaughter; not the clash of armies but the destruction by soldiers of civilians.” It seems, at least from my findings, that most people had similar reaction to Reiff. It is almost impossible to find (at least in the English speaking world) a response to the photo that doesn’t in some sense refer to the fact that Haviv’s photo of a Serbian soldier kicking a muslim woman made them realize not only the horror and destruction of the Bosnian War, but in war in general. For example, British newspaper The Guardian writes, “These are two images in a remarkable body of work. Remarkable because, regardless of the horror, Haviv captures those odd flickers of humanity even as the killers are going about their killing; even as the victims go about their dying.” And the Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail writes how Haviv, “powerfully captured the depravity of the Balkan civil wars.”
Only 20 years have past since these photos were published, and I wonder how much interpretations of these photos will change over time. In Regarding the Pain of Others Susan Sontag talks about this very photo, as an example of how important context is in analyzing this photo. She writes how this photo can tell you war is bad in a general sense, as an armed soldier is kicking an unarmed woman who is on the ground. However, the photo being representational of ethnic cleansing is only true because people know the context of the photo. I wonder how Serbians would respond to the photo. Most would probably see the photo as deplorable, but would they also see it as ethnic cleansing? I also wonder how people will respond to this photo decades from now, when people writing about it weren’t alive during the war and may or may not know its context.
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/21/books/bk-14875/2
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/capturing-a-war-crime/article25016202/
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/jun/17/artsandhumanities.highereducation
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