Month: March 2016 (Page 2 of 2)

One photograph that I found really interesting from Ron Haviv’s Blood and Honey shows a Serbian soldier riding by Haviv on a bike. He looks directly into the lens and gives Haviv what looks like a peace sign, as a building is burning behind him. A rifle almost as tall as he is is attached to his waist. The caption for this photo reads, “A Serbian soldier cycles past a burning house on the destroyed streets of the Croatian city of Vukovar. Nov 14 1991. The city was completely destroyed after three months of bombing by Serbian forces.” This photograph is so memorable and so haunting to me because of its irony. What does this soldier, who presumably just participated in destroying an entire city, know about peace? I thought that maybe this believed his army’s actions would bring on peace, or that maybe it was a mindless gesture, an acknowledgement that he was being photographed. This irony (for lack of a better term)  is something that I noticed in some of the other photos in Blood and Honey. For example, there is the photograph of the couple kissing in front of a ruined church, another of a circus poster laying on a destroyed Bosnian street. The irony in many of these photos becomes extremely sinister given the context of the world they are taken in.

However, as I was thinking about this photo, I decided to look up if the peace sign has the same connotation in Serbian culture as in American culture. Looking closer at the photo, I saw that the soldiers thumb was up and I realized that the soldier in the photo is not giving a peace sign at all, but actually the Serbian three-finger salute. The salute has a controversial history. Originally used to represent the Trinity in Orthodox ceremonies, since then has become a symbol of Serbian nationalism. It was even used by the pro-Nazi government during the Second World War. During the Yugoslav wars, and was used a symbol of victory by the Serbian troops. Knowing this information changed the context of the photograph for me. The “peace sign” no longer seemed ironic. The soldier does not want to evoke peace, but the exact opposite – military power.

I think it’s interesting to think about the way I approached this photo within the context of Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others. The book essentially argues that photographs can make us feel, but they can not explain things. About another one of Ron Haviv’s photos in Blood and Honey where a Serbian soldier casually kicks the head of a dead Bosnian, Sontag argues against the idea that the photograph can tell a person all they need to know. My misreading of this photograph was completely because of the country I grew up in. Im sure anyone living in former Yugoslav countries, especially those who were alive during the wars would immediately recognize what the soldier’s hand gesture means and what it is meant to convey. However, if I wasn’t curious enough to research this photo further, I would never have actually understood this photograph. I would have dismissed it as something ironic. Perhaps this is something Haviv thought about when publishing this photograph. I’m sure Haviv would have known that to an American audience, the three finger salute would have, on first glance would be read as a peace sign. His caption mentions nothing about the salute, so I wonder if he wanted to play on this lack of cultural context.

Blood and Honey: “One of the best non fiction books of the year” – Los Angeles Times

What makes a photojournalist reliable? How can we trust the authenticity of a photograph especially in today’s digital era where almost anyone could edit a picture? And more importantly, how accurately can we evaluate a whole situation based on the one instant that is captured and given to us? How important is the role given to interpretation in photojournalism? What makes a photographer a reliable journalistic source to examine and evaluate conflicts and crisis going on around the globe?

Susan Moeller addresses the issue of authenticity and interpretation in Shooting War. She states that images create a “unique history of each conflict” as they leave space for interpretation on both the photographer’s and the viewer’s sides. Only by playing with the framing of a photo, it can be interpreted very differently. I remember that the theme of accuracy of the press came up in my peacemaking class last semester. Our teacher told us this anecdote from when he was working in Iraq. Some photojournalists were sent to cover the conflict but in the village where the negotiations were being done, life continued as per usual so the photographers started getting mad at the fact that there was “not enough action going on”. But then, a building started burning down and the photographers rushed there. They almost all ended up framing their picture in a very similar way: showing only on the building, cutting everything out. This way, they created a very dramatic scene of horror when in fact it did not reflect the life and conditions in the village at all.

Raising awareness about human rights issues is exactly the mission the photographers of the photo agency Vii have given themselves. Ron Haviv, co-founder of Vii, dedicated his life and career to documenting the injustices going on in the world in hope of one day helping to erase them. With more than 30 years working on-ground, the coverage of more than 25 conflicts, an Emmy nomination and many awards such as the American Photography award and the Art of photography award, it is fair to say that Ron Haviv has earned a well-deserved credibility, that even President George Bush acknowledged when he mentioned one of the Haviv’s shots as a reason leading to the United States’ intervention in Panama. The power of Haviv’s photographs is clearly enormous. Some even served as evidence at the international tribunal in order to sentence cases of war crimes.

One photograph, from the Haviv’s album Blood and Honey, especially caught my eye. It was taken on September 23rd, 1995 in Bihac Pocket in Bosnia and shows an elderly Bosnian woman, smoking a cigarette on the side of the road. The caption explains: “She was expelled from her village and arrived in a village that had just been cleansed of Serbs, and she was forced to flee again a few days later when Serb troops retook the village.  All forces attempted to cleanse areas into ethnically pure groups during the war in Bosnia.” Even though it is not as violent in its content as other photographs of the album, this picture is just as effective and powerful. It does not show blood but it shows extreme suffering. It is a real testimony, incredibly rich in content. However, it is very subtle. We can feel the war’s impact through this woman’s eyes. We can almost see the atrocities of the war in her tears. She just gives out such an overwhelming aura, it undeniably touches the viewer. She stands out in this picture, thanks to the fact that the background is blurred out. The point of this picture is to concentrate on the people, to show the world the devastating impacts of the war and to focus on humanity itself.

Esthetically, this image is striking. The focus is put on the woman’s eyes, the most important component of this image. This reminded me of Steve Mccurry’s portraits, in many of which the eyes are really the main focus. Then, by blurring the cigarette, the brightest element in the first plan, it becomes the second element that we are brought to. Cigarettes can be interpreted as representations of death, self-destruction and desperation; all of which are feelings that the woman seems to be experiencing in this situation of crisis. This woman looks so desperate, it seems like she is looking for something to hang onto in the middle of this chaotic war to which she lost everything and now has nowhere to go. The cigarette might also represent a source of stress-relief. Her gestures give away her state of extreme anxiety: she is nervously biting the skin off of her nails. Also, she looks terribly lonely. I realized that she is not wearing a ring: Is she married? Was she married? Is she a widow?

Another question that I thought about was: why not portray a child? Wouldn’t that be more effective? But I then realized that here, the fact that it is an elderly woman, with experience, who is anxious and desperate, not knowing where to go makes it even more powerful. She has the wiseness of the age, but still is panicked. It brings a whole other dimension to the picture. It brings in a certain fatality and idea of no escape possible that we would probably not have with a child. Also, in her eyes can be perceived a beautifully painful childish innocence; contrasting a lot with the situation going on around her and the cigarette.

To me, the major conflict represented in this image is the one of fate. I can’t seem to figure out if she gives up, or if she keeps trying. Her eyes are telling me that she’s giving up, tired of fighting for a lost cause; but her gestures imply the opposite, that she is still alive and thinking about what to do next.

Ethnic Cleansing – An elderly Bosnian woman sits and smokes a cigarette by the side of a road in Bihac Pocket, Bosnia, Sept. 23, 1995. She was expelled from her village and arrived in a village that had just been cleansed of Serbs, and she was forced to flee again a few days later when Serb troops retook the village. All forces attempted to cleanse areas into ethnically pure groups during the war in Bosnia.