BETWEEN FEARS AND HOPE

Almost thirty years after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, photographer Fabrice Dekoninck has explored the most intimate aspects of the memory of those who survived the siege of Sarajevo, the ethnic cleansing of the Prijedor region, and the genocide in Srebrenica. Like a memory anthropologist, he documented the ‘living’ memory of the war on the very sites where the events unfolded, in close contact with surviving witnesses.This long-term work paints a portrait of a Bosnian society traumatised by the legacy of the war, which, in the absence of historical truth, takes the risk of seeing it resurface. In the light of the return of war in Europe and the resurgence of nationalism worldwide, this book provides crucial insights into the risks posed to peace by instrumentalisation of war memories.

Almost thirty years after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, photographer Fabrice Dekoninck has explored the most intimate aspects of the memory of those who survived the siege of Sarajevo, the ethnic cleansing of the Prijedor region, and the genocide in Srebrenica. Like a memory anthropologist, he documented the ‘living’ memory of the war on the very sites where the events unfolded, in close contact with surviving witnesses. This long-term work paints a portrait of a Bosnian society traumatised by the legacy of the war, which, in the absence of historical truth, takes the risk of seeing it resurface. In the light of the return of war in Europe and the resurgence of nationalism worldwide, this book provides crucial insights into the risks posed to peace by instrumentalisation of war memories.