Lowe Paul - Photography, Bearing Witness and the Yugoslav Wars, 1988-2021

Combining case studies with theoretical and philosophical insights, this book explores the role of photography in representing conflict and genocide, both during and after the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Concentrating on the photographer, this book considers the practice of photojournalism rather than simply in terms of its consumption and use by the media. The experiences and working methods of photographers in the field are analysed, showing how practitioners conceptualised their work and responded to larger questions about neutrality and moral responsibility. Presenting this active form of witness, author Paul Lowe investigates a crucial ethical paradox faced by photojournalists. Moving beyond the end of the Yugoslav Wars in 2001, this book also considers the therapeutic and validating potential of photography for survivors, featuring photographers whose work centres on memory and reconciliation. Based on archival research, close reading and discourse analyses of photographs, and interviews with a range of international photographers, this book explores how photography from this period has been used and remediated in editorial photojournalism, fine art documentary and advocacy photography.

This book will be of interest to scholars in the history of photography, art and visual culture, and photojournalism.

Paul Lowe is a Reader in Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, UK.

Series Editors:

Professor Emerita Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Professor Patricia Hayes, University of Western Cape, South Africa

Professor Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University, USA

This field-defining series explores the inseparable relationship between photography and history. Bringing together perspectives from a broad disciplinary base it investigates what wider histories of, for example, wars, social movements, regionality or nationhood, look like when photography and its social and cultural force are brought into the centre of analysis.

Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire

Jane Lydon

Victorian Photography, Literature, and the Invention of Modern Memory

Already the Past

Jennifer Green-Lewis

Public Images

Celebrity, Photojournalism, and the Making of the Tabloid Press

Ryan Linkof

Photography and the Making of Eastern Europe

Conflicting Identities, Cultural Heritage (18591945)

Ewa Manikowska

Photographing Tutankhamun

Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and the Archive

Christina Riggs

Photography, Reconstruction and the Cultural History of the Postwar European City

Tom Albeson

Photography, Bearing Witness and the Yugoslav Wars, 19882021

Testimonies of Light

Paul Lowe

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Photography-History-History-Photography/book-series/BLPHOPHHP

Paul Lowe

Cover image: The imprint remains of a Kosovar Albanian burned by Serbian forces in Drenica, Kosovo, June 29, 1999, Ron Haviv, VII Photo.

First published 2022

by Routledge

4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 Paul Lowe

The right of Paul Lowe to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-474-24375-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-32478-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-08629-1 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003086291

Typeset in Sabon

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Amra

The border crossing point at Morin in North Eastern Albania in April 1999 was a desolate, bleak and miserable place. Tens of thousands of Kosovan Albanian refugees were being forced over the border by masked paramilitaries as part of the Serbian Governments attempts to expel them and ethically cleanse Kosovo. A long column of desperate men, women and children arrived in a constant stream, having negotiated the no mans land between the two countries, mostly on foot. As they entered Albania, exhausted, hungry and scared, they were met not just by Humanitarian organisations attempting to give them shelter and support, but also dozens of journalists, TV crews and photographers. I was one of this throng of media personnel, but felt deeply conflicted by my own presence. Having covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia for the past ten years, and in particular the siege of Sarajevo, where I had made many friends, I could not help but imagine how these scenes of desperation had been repeated so many times over the years, and how people to whom I had become very close to had perhaps narrowly avoided the same fate or even worse. I questioned myself, asking what was I contributing to this story, what was my justification for being there at all? This moment, and many others in my career as a photojournalist, challenged the foundations of my own practice, epitomising the concerns and worries and experiences of my career to date, as I questioned my presence at this scene, and the contribution I, and possibly my colleagues, were making to the understanding of the story. Were we simply there as professional, paid voyeurs, hoping to make a profit on the sufferings of others? Or were we actively contributing to the debate about the politics of intervention and the response to widespread human rights abuse? What value might our images have at a later date, either as part of the historical record, or even submitted as evidence in a court of law to prosecute crimes against humanity? These moments provided the catalyst for the questions that underpin this book, as I sought to explore the concept of witnessing as an ethical position from which to report on the abuses of the world. This book is my attempt to argue for an important and significant role for photojournalism and documentary photography, based on my own personal experience and practice as well as that of many colleagues, as well as an engagement with the conceptual, philosophical and theoretical aspects of how the visual realm can bear witness to atrocity.