BETWEEN FEARS AND HOPE

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

This book is an immersive travel into the memory of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Fabrice Dekoninck explores, in its most intimate aspects, the memory and resilience processes of those who survived the siege of Sarajevo, the mass crimes and ethnic cleansing of Prijedor, and the genocide of Srebrenica. Those who decided to face it up, with strength and dignity. Is it still possible to hope in a society where hatred is growing every day, fed by state ignorance, guilty silences and nationalisticrhetoric?This book is addressed to all those who wonder about the memory of one of the most important events of the second half of the 20th century in Europe, the matrix of the modern wars to come -Ukraine being the perfect example. It is particularly addressed to the younger generations, those after 1995, for whom the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, although so recent, has no concrete reality, beyond a footnote in the history books.Almost thirty years after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, photographer Fabrice Dekoninck has explored the most intimate aspects of the memory of those who survived the siege of Sarajevo, the ethnic cleansing of the Prijedor region, and the genocide in Srebrenica. Like a memory anthropologist, he documented the living' memory of the war on the very sites where the events unfolded, in close contact with surviving witnesses. This long-term work paints a portrait of a Bosniansociety traumatised by the legacy of the war, which, in the absence of historical truth, takes the risk of seeing it resurface. In the light of the return of war in Europe and the resurgence of nationalism worldwide, this book provides crucial insights into the risks posed to peace by instrumentalisation of war memories.