Ziyah Gafić: Everyday objects, tragic histories
Ziyah Gafić: Des objets du quotidien, des histoires tragiques
To help him come to terms with the tragedy of his own homeland, Bosnian photographer Ziyah Gafić turns his camera on the aftermath of conflict, showing his images in galleries, in books and on Instagram. Full bio
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des peignes, des lunettes.
du génocide en Bosnie
pour leur dernier voyage.
des victimes portaient
toothpaste and a toothbrush
du dentifrice et une bosse à dents,
qu'ils n'avaient aucune idée
contre des prisonniers de guerre.
à travers ma patrie,
les experts médico-légaux
le plus grand jamais découvert.
au début des années 80,
principalement des civils,
de la guerre
des Nations Unies,
entre les mains de l'armée serbe.
délibérée et systématique
de leur existence.
seulement le meurtre ;
de ceux qui ont péri
que leurs corps fragiles
et nos souvenirs qui s'estompent.
du rassemblement de ces éléments
qui ont disparu dans les tueries,
sur le sol européen
ne doit rester inconnu ou
portaient avec eux
dans des sacs en plastique blancs,
packed in white plastic bags
dans « Les Experts ».
comme un outil médico-légal
visuelle des victimes,
preuves médico-légales très précieuses
very valuable forensic evidence
pour crimes de guerre.
ces objets physiquement,
est un processus extrêmement difficile,
les médecins et les avocats
croyez-le ou non,
facilement parcourir.
j'aime bien rendre à la communauté.
la sensibilisation.
leurs photographies resteront
impartial et précis
est une question d'empathie,
items guarantee empathy.
garantit l'empathie.
est une photographie qui est
que possible d'être un document.
manquantes seront identifiées,
en décomposition dans leur tombes
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ziyah Gafić - Photographer + storytellerTo help him come to terms with the tragedy of his own homeland, Bosnian photographer Ziyah Gafić turns his camera on the aftermath of conflict, showing his images in galleries, in books and on Instagram.
Why you should listen
Ziyah Gafić uses his camera to capture the aftermath of war. He has traveled to Pakistan, Iraq and Chechnya to capture beautiful portraits of people carrying on with their lives in the face of destruction; he has photographed the everyday lives of children in Rwanda, a generation born from the widespread use of rape as a weapon during the Rwandan genocide. A moving question runs through his work: After war, how do people manage to keep the fabric of society together?
Gafić's interest in this subject comes from his own biography. Born in Sarajevo, he was a teenager during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Through photography, he parses what happened in his homeland. For his book Quest for Identity, Gafić photographed the watches, keys, shoes, combs and glasses exhumed from mass graves 20 years after the Bosnian War. These objects are cleaned, catalogued and used to help identify the bodies found with them, but afterwards, they become what Gafić calls “orphans of the narrative,” either destroyed or stored away out of sight and out of mind. His quest is to keep them in view as a last testament to the fact that these people existed, preserving them as an easily accessible visual archive that tells the story of what happened—integrating an objective forensic perspective with human compassion.
Ziyah Gafić | Speaker | TED.com