Moments in Between

– pictures from former Yugoslavia before, during and after the wars in the 1990s

This initial impression made me understand that what I could contribute with would be something else than the dramatic events on the frontlines. I could rest in the assurance that anybody who saw my pictures would also know about the other aspects of the wars. I was freeloading on the work of the real war photographers so to say. So in the coming years I focused on the everyday in the shadow of war.

During these years the wars in Yugoslavia totally filled my mind. I was shocked by the evil, the ethnic cleansing, the raping, the cold blooded killing. And I was enraged by the lack of will in the surrounding world to do what was necessary to stop what I saw as the return of fascism. My personal outcome in the end was the book. But along the way I made several exhibitions and numerous reportages for different magazines. It was a transforming period for me as a person and a photographer, but more importantly I really wanted to make people understand what was going on, on a deeper level.

Many years have passed. I’ve made other books, which somehow have been influenced by what I learned in former Yugoslavia. For one thing, they all seem to deal with European borderlands, one way or the other. Now I’m photographing in Ukraine. And I can’t help but seeing the similarities with the Balkan wars of the 1990s. A dominant, aggressive nationalism forcing itself upon people, claiming its right, regardless of the hate and destruction it creates. It is exploited, represented and forced into place by scrupulous leaders such as Milošević and Putin, for reasons linked to money and power, but the brainwashing and violence change peoples’ minds and will have consequenses for generations. I also see a similar naïvity in the surrounding world of what we are up against, leading to a refusal to engage strongly enough. I just hope Ukraine will not be forced into a peace agreement as devastating as the Dayton Agreement has been for Bosnia.

Jens Olof Lasthein