GIVE US YOUR SUGGESTIONS & FEEDBACK ABOUT THE SITE
We will send you an E-mail every time there is a new article in your favorite section. Sign-Up For ALERTS.

Photo Book Reviews

Blood and Honey (Design Method) by Ron Haviv Reviewed by Sarah O'Dea Article rating: 10.00

In June of 1991, Ron Haviv set out to document the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia.  What would follow in the next ten years of ethnic and political turmoil would comprise a body of work so demonstrative of the personal tragedy of war and yet so explicit in its telling of the events and the particular suffering of the Balkan people, that it stands witness as significant historical and political documentation.

Blood and Honey, translated from the Turkish “Balkan” (Bal=Blood Kan=Honey), provides a glimpse into the lives of the Balkan people and how the atrocities of war infiltrated every aspect of their every day lives. 

This unique humanization of such tragedy came at great risk to Haviv, who repeatedly put himself in harm’s way to get some of his most powerful and compelling shots—Images of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Slovenians, the intimidation endured from paramilitaries, the constant threat of brutality, of internment in concentration camps, and of death.

As Chuck Sudetic writes, "The best photographs of war and disaster shock and disturb.  It doesn’t matter if the image in question depicts the horror as it takes place or instead, the cold, tear-stained reality of its aftermath."

Sudetic continues, "What this book makes clear is Haviv’s ability to operate brilliantly in both registers.  He is a superb action photographer, but what he is drawn to, above else, are the victims of conflict—civilians, prisoners, those grieving for lost loved ones."

Defending Haviv’s body of work in his essay “That these photographs exist”, writer David Rieff points to the fact that the value of this series is not simply measured by its power as a documentary.  Haviv treats each photograph with a very deliberate attention to subject, frame, and mood.

Blood and Honey displays a unique thoughtfulness; Ron Haviv shows us the horror of the Balkan War not simply through massive bloodshed and violence, but in the universality of hopelessness and fear.  The faces and scenes depicted in the book are not alien to the reader because their struggle is recognizable as a state of humanity.

To produce a series of wartime photographs that evokes a personal identification with the subject by its viewer is a truly ambitious task.  Ron Haviv does just this; he challenges his viewer to be a witness to the events—to regard them not as a spectacle, but as a reality.

-Sarah O'Dea

>>Click here to visit the Blood and Honey website...

>>Click here to purchase this book from Amazon.com...

>>Click here to visit VII Photo Agency's website...

^ Back to top

* Your Name:
* Email address:
	(Enter the code shown)
	(Your e-mail address will not show on the site and is used so that we can contact you back if needed)
* Your Comment about this article::
	Include me in the TGP Monthly Newsletter