Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – 29 October 2021

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – Ron Haviv’s exhibition Liberty showcases images never before seen from the Bosnian War.

(C) Ron Haviv

Plus there are a few copies left in the third print run of Canadian photographer Gunar Roze’s MANHATTAN 1982. I bought this book last year and have thoroughly enjoyed this quirky time capsule that takes you to the streets of NYC. It held a personal fascination for me given that I first visited the city in 1983. Roze rediscovered these images thirty years after he’d taken them. Click here to find out more.

Exhibition:

Liberty – Ron Haviv

Bosnian and Croatian prisoners of war at the prison camp in Trnopolje, Bosnia. All sides of the Bosnian conflict ran prison camps, where many people were killed, and several commanders were later indicted for war crimes (C) Ron Haviv

Award-winning photojournalist and co-founder of VII is perhaps most well-known for his photographs of the Bosnian war, some of which were used as evidence in International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.

Bosnian prisoner of war at the prison camp in Trnopolje, Bosnia, August, 1992 (C) Ron Haviv

A Muslim in Bijelina, Bosnia begs for his life after capture by Arkan’s Tigers in the spring of 1992 C) Ron Haviv

C) Ron Haviv

C) Ron Haviv

Haviv’s images of prisoner exchanges and prisons, many of which have never been shown, were showcased this month at OKC Abrašević in the historic city of Mostar in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The celebration of a Serb prisoner who is reunited with his family after being released from a prison camp in central Bosnia, Aug. 12, 1992 (C) Ron Haviv

“The timing of my exhibition, Liberty…comes when rhetoric about returning to war is rising. Once taken as news images, then used as evidence, they now live as a warning to all sides.”

Ron Haviv October 2021

The opening of Haviv’s exhibition Liberty in Mostar (C) Stojan Lasić

Haviv was in attendance for the opening. In the video below he talks about his experience documenting this conflict. Haviv’s images confirm the significance of photography as a means of evidence and of remembrance. And as the photographer suggests, hopefully as a warning.