July 23, 2007
Crisis or Agression?
Peter Marlow
Over the years I often get to airports very early so I can take pictures, and with time to kill recently at Tesla Airport, Belgrade I took a walk to the somewhat decaying, but highly atmospheric Soviet-era Aircraft Museum next door. I was interested to see how it dealt with the Balkan War and was not disappointed. There were exhibitions of parts of shot-down aircraft, from WW2 but also from more recent history; an F16 tailplane, a canopy and a pilot’s personal effects on the ejector seat of a B117.
SERBIA. Belgrade.The Museum of Yugoslav Aviation 2007. © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos
I visited Belgrade, Serbia, for a small exhibition of my landscapes and a workshop with Serbian photojournalists. I always like to find out first who is in the audience and asked who still shoots with film, out of about sixty people only one hand went up! Not surprising in a city with no E6 lab only one place to process C41.
During the workshop we had very limited time so I proposed a very simple project on ‘Hands’. I used Canon 5D and went with the group, to the park and market place near the gallery, and for an hour we all had great fun in the sun finding hands to photograph.
SERBIA. Belgrade. Project workshop with Belgrade photographers supported by HP. Work by Peter Marlow conducted with the workshop group on the theme of 'Hands'. 2007. © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos
I was first in Serbia on a family holiday with my twin brother Chris, and my father, I remember it well, it was the first time I had got drunk, with a cheap bottle of the local wine, and a shop that did not mind selling it to two ten year olds.
Many years later In the summer of 1999 I spent some time on the Aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, late on the story I wanted to make a study of the technology of war, and was able to spend time on a number of ships in the US Fleet on the Adriatic Sea, who were running 24/7 operations to bomb the Serbian army out of Kosovo. Journalists were given berths one level below the flight deck, where it was impossible to sleep as the F18’s and F14’s took off above our heads, within feet of our beds. I concentrated on the technology and the individuals, Where was the button to press to set off a cruise missile? Who pressed it? What did it look like? How does a Marine do his ironing?
US. Fleet in action during Kosovo War. 1999. © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos
It was hard not to be impressed by the sheer scale of the technology available to kill people, but easy in the noise, the smell of Avgas, and confusion, to forget where all these bombs were going to be dropped and who was going to die that night in Belgrade.
Eight years later, the evidence in Belgrade is still plain to see, The police HQ, the TV Station, the Chinese Embassy, all still basically ruins with GPS accuracy, next door to a normally functioning city.
Peter Marlow's press card made by the Magnum New York Office. © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos
Back at the talk, which I tried to make non political I showed a press card created by our New York office, bizarrely for the ID photograph they used a shot of me wearing anti-flash goggles on the deck of the aircraft carrier. As many of the people in the room had shot the story from the ‘receiving end’ I could feel a strong reaction as soon as I mentioned the ‘Kosovo Crisis’ and my own coverage of it. I asked the audience if this was the right terminology, and was told rather sharply by one photographer that the correct expression was “The NATO Aggression”.
I made a plan there and then to make a small exhibition with a Serbian photojournalist in the audience, Tomislav Peternek, who shot the bombing from the receiving end, at night, from the roof of various buildings in Belgrade.
Two sides of the same story?
Links:
» Peter Marlow's story US. Fleet in action during Kosovo War. 1999.
» Peter Marlow's story Serbia. Belgrade.The Museum of Yugoslav Aviation. 2007.
» Peter Marlow's Website
» Museum of Aviation in Belgrade (Wikipedia)
» Tomislav Peternek's photos of Belgrade bombing
Published on the Magnum Blog on July 23, 2007
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