Many people and publications have reviewed, reference, or reflected on Ron Haviv’s Blood and Honey—particularly the one photograph of the Serbian paramilitary member kicking the body of the dying civilian. NPR mentions that photograph to symbolize one of the most violent of images from Haviv in order to make the point that even these terrible photos could not urge the rest of the world to pay attention to what was happening to the Balkans. Emily Schmidt of Miami University, furthers the story. As the war became more and more intense, Haviv’s photos began to gain the attention of the U.S. government and were used to lobby the Western powers to intervene. Both NPR and Schmidt utilize the photo of the paramilitary member kicking the civilian body in their articles to symbolize the terror.
Then I ran into an article on The Guardian by Peter Beaumont in which he paints that specific photo in a different light. While still admitting to its shock factor and level of horror, Beaumont notes “the odd flickers of humanity” in the killers and the victims of the photograph. He notes at the end that “Haviv’s images off a universal comfort to us all from a place where there is…little to be found.” Beyond being photographs that garner the attention and action of the world and powerful governments, Haviv’s photos capture humanity at its purest form—the small details that remind the viewer that these are human beings who are doing the killing, who are dying. This concept is discussed in Sarah O’Dea’s review of Blood and Honey, in which she calls it the “unique humanization of such tragedy.” While capturing terror, Haviv also captures the aftermath, the consequences of war. More the just a documentation of war, each of Haviv’s photograph is a deliberate testament to the human pain, human struggle, human suffering of the Balkan War. As said perfectly by O’Dea: “The faces and scenes depicted in the book are not alien to the reader because their struggle is recognizable as a state of humanity.” As viewers, we are challenged to become viewers of reality, the suffering of fellow human beings, not a foreign spectacle.
I had a difficult time looking for non-American/European commentary, but from what I’ve found, the specific photo has been the most prominent and most famous of all the photos from Blood and Honey. It has been used in many different publications and websites to represent the Balkan War, Haviv, and most importantly, human suffering and tragedy.
If I were studying the legacy of this image, I would want to speak to any living survivors of that war. I would want to talk to people who experienced the pain that is represented in that photo firsthand in order to collect history on how reflect on that war. Then, I would try to find the families and descendants of the victims, to get their story on the pain of their ancestors. Additionally, I would want to talk to the man who committed the kicking and other paramilitary members to figure out their reflection of the war. Lastly, I would want to speak with government officials who were in power at the time of the war to discuss how the photo affected their decisions and whether they wish they would’ve acted differently.
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/feb/010222.haviv.html
http://dpa20miamiuniversity.com/2015/11/12/ron-haviv-international-conflict-photojournalist/#more-492
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/jun/17/artsandhumanities.highereducation
http://takegreatpictures.com/photo-tips/photo-book-reviews/blood-and-honey-design-method
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