Gun Nation
@ The Half King
In the decade plus that he has been covering international news events and winning a series of prestigious photo awards, Ron Haviv has ignored every mother's maxim: whatever you do, stay out of harm's way. In recording some of the most brutal events of the late 20th century, he has been put on a Serbian death list, captured by Iraqi soldiers and Serb militiamen, charged with being a spy, interrogated, imprisoned, beaten. It is not that he courts danger, but as a photojournalist covering the best and more often worst of times, he is thrust into life-threatening situations.
Photography was merely a hobby during Haviv's undergraduate years at New York University where he majored in journalism. But the hobby grew into a passion. After earning his B.A., he took on unpaid photo assignments at the New York City Tribune and the Agence France-Presse. During those lean years he doubled as a bicycle messenger and a Good Humor man, but he quit his day jobs when he was offered a ticket to Panama in 1989 to cover Noriega's bid for reelection. His photograph of the Panamanian Vice President being knifed and beaten made the covers of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.
Since that fortuitous moment, he has become one of the most sought-after photojournalists around. He has covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela, cocaine wars in Columbia, the Gulf War, the fight of the Kurds from Iraq, conflict in Russia, refugees in Rwanda and political upheaval in Haiti. He was one of the first photojournalists to cover the civil war in Yugoslavia and his book and exhibit, Blood and Honey, is a haunting record of that genocidal madness and its desolate aftermath.
Today, as a contract photographer for Newsweek, Haviv continues to travel to the world's hotspots, risking his life for the opportunity to document the raging issues of the day. For his superb work he has received several World Press awards and Picture of the Year awards, an Overseas Press Club award and the Leica Medal of Excellence.
I was just beginning my career as a photojournalist in 1991 when I heard about an independence movement growing in the Balkans. All I knew about the country was that it had hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, that the Archduke whose death sparked World War I was assassinated there, and that it was one of the few countries in Eastern Europe that hadn't undergone vast political change after the Cold War. I learned that the word Balkan means mountain in Turkish. Balkan broken apart means bal [honey] and kan [blood]. After some quick research and conversations with colleagues, I decided I had to go see for myself.
I landed in Yugoslavia the day after its northernmost republic, Slovenia, had declared its independence. The only way to reach the front was by rail, so I caught a train that same day. Everyone on board was anxious, as I myself was. Eventually, I struck up a conversation with a woman. When I told her I was a journalist enroute to photograph the independence movement, she broke into tears. "The breakaway of Slovenia is just the beginning. After Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia will follow. Yugoslavia is finished," she said. She shouldn't worry, I replied. There couldn't be a war of any magnitude in the middle of Europe in this day and age. My naivete was to haunt me in the years to come.
In the beginning it was difficult to convince editors in New York that the war was serious. Yugoslavia was no longer just the place of the 1984 Olympics, but a cancer in the heart of Europe. Yet, the U.S. government seemed strangely indifferent to what was happening. When the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence a few months later, war broke out there, too, and the level of violence increased. As I watched paramilitary forces execute innocent civilians, it became increasingly difficult to justify my role as a journalist. When my pictures of the first ethnic cleansings and executions in Bosnia were published, there were still no reactions from the politicians. Although I knew photographs alone couldn't change the world, I felt that the international community had truly failed the people of Yugoslavia.
Eventually, the world powers did choose to intervene, but only half-heartedly, and these incursions often did more harm than good. Perhaps the passivity began with the Yugoslavs themselves. In that first battle in Bosnia, as in the previous wars, I watched how the townspeople reacted to the rhetoric of their nationalistic leaders. The war progressed from barber against butcher, to commando against civilian, and finally evolved into tank against tank. I photographed all sides hoping to distinguish the differences between them, but in the end realized they were all the same: people manipulated for the sake of power and greed.
Initially I had hoped to draw attention to the situation, to provoke the world to react and possibly prevent what the people of Yugoslavia thought to be inevitable. But the war spread, engulfing all regions of the former Yugoslavia. I saw it through to the end, and today, my work to date stands as a testament of that war. It records places, people, events, facts and points in time. It records death, destruction, rape, torture, exile, and the abrogation of virtually all human rights. In the decade I recorded the war, these photographs stand as an accusation against the national powers who stood by and allowed wholesale slaughter of their countrypeople. Hundreds of thousands died and millions more became refugees. I hope this work will stand as a reminder to all of us to never forget the brutal possibilities inherent in war.
– Ron Haviv
