Sarajevo has given me so much, I’m just repaying my debt….
The story began in 1995, towards the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the first armed conflict in Europe since 1945, when I was brought to the film set of Ademir Kénovic’s The Perfect Circle in Sarajevo.
This human experience has left a lasting impression on my mind and my senses. It was there that I understood the full extent of the war and its consequences. I encountered eyewitnesses of the tragedy which struck the residents of this multicultural city. These photographers show History. It is through their eyes that we experience contemporary conflicts.
Who are these women and men who relentlessly bear witness, often endangering their own lives, in order to keep us informed and tell us with their images that “we cannot say we didn’t know”?
Paying them homage has become my obsession. On April 6, 2012, I returned to Sarajevo to attend an unusual anniversary: the commemoration of the outbreak of the war. All the reporters were there. The air was tense with emotion. After nearly four years of siege, the links forged between people were strong…
I felt the need to go back and see them again. This time, however, I went with the intention of taking their portraits. It was then that I came up with the idea of a series called “The Sarajevo Generation,” carried out thanks to the financial backing of the Caisse d’Épargne Ile-de-France, which has supported the project from the very start. In all, some fifty portraits, made over nine months in nine countries and 17 cities—from New York to Zagreb, passing through Barcelona and Oslo—were exhibited in Sarajevo by the Mission Centenaire 14–18 on the occasion of the international commemorations of World War I.
I continued and expanded this remembrance project by portraying those who report on the world’s unrest, whether in Syria, Chechnya, or Central Africa. I adopted the same process for each portrait, regardless of the day and time of our encounter, rain or shine: namely my Leica and a random wall somewhere in the vicinity of our meeting spot. My only objective: to take a candid portrait of each of them, looking them straight in the eye.
Walls as metaphors for cities: walls constructed over time and destroyed in battles. Walls that shelter, protecting the local populations and the reporters alike. Harassed by the horrors of war, the photographers would find themselves “pushed to the wall” or “with their backs against the wall.” This is what I wanted to retrace in this exhibition.
In order to extend their gaze, we asked each photographer to choose a single photo of their own which in their mind best symbolizes “war” among all the conflicts they had covered, and explain why they chose it.
With a view to exhibiting these shared perspectives at the Museum of the Great War, we found it appropriate to make a connection with World War I photographers. Thanks to the ECPAD archives (Établissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense), we traveled back in time to the first image-makers serving in the ranks of the French army.
The thirty-four diptychs from the permanent collections of the Museum of the Great War—the “war to end all wars,” which broke out in Sarajevo—resonate deeply today.
Alizé Le Maoult
Every Friday, for 10 consecutive weeks, The Eye of Photography will publish one of the 34 portraits of photographers made by Alizé Le Maoult.
Alizé Le Maoult, What My Eyes Have Seen…
From October 1 to December 31, 2016
Musée de la Grande Guerre
Rue Lazare Ponticelli, 77100 Meaux, France
http://www.museedelagrandeguerre.eu/
