Photo Gallery on the Balkan War

Photos by Tamas Somogyi

With my friend Tamas Somogyi we visited the whole of the former Yugoslavia, expect for Macedonia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo. Sometimes we went full of fear and our tour was like a holiday; sometimes we expected a relaxing weekend and it turned out to be a nightmare. In both cases it was Tamas, who persuaded me to start at last. He used his usual method, calmly and inevitably saying over and over that we needed to go to Bosnia, until I could not bear it anymore and agreed.
So far we were lucky. Although we got to some risky places in unpeaceful times, we were not directly in danger. (We would be happy to say that "we have come back from the throat of death countless times", but it would not be true...)
We have seen things that had to be photographed calmly, patiently, passively, although direct participation in the situation itself would have been maybe better. I heard that the last does not leave so unbearable anger behind.
I do not know.
I do not know either, whether there will be a solution to this war started and fought by mostly insane people. To this war that goes on so close to Hungary and has sown the seeds of war of generations ahead.
And insane people, who start it again and again, there are everywhere.
Also in our country.
We should not forget: revenge is followed by revenge.
You will not see pictures here that were meant to frighten, to shock, to astonish. There are no carved corpses. Still they show the whole of it. The nonsense and sinfulness of the whole.
I quote Graham Greene, who, referring to an other war, wrote in his novel: "I am only a reporter - but God exists only for those who write the editorials."
Somogyi knows God. He can be, though, also a reporter, if needed. For instance in the former Yugoslavia. You can see it...

Janos Pekarek, journalist