Ziyah Gafić: Everyday objects, tragic histories
Ziyah Gafić: Oggetti quotidiani, storie tragiche
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
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
del genocidio in Bosnia
nel loro viaggio finale.
toothpaste and a toothbrush
come dentifricio e spazzolino
che non avessero idea
che sarebbero stati scambiati
in tutto il territorio
i medici forensi stanno riesumando corpi
che sia mai stata scoperta.
si suppone siano stati uccisi,
della Nazioni Unite come Srebrenica
distruggere le proprietà,
della loro esistenza.
dei loro fragili corpi
selettiva ed evanescente.
di questa raccolta di oggetti
che sono scomparsi in quegli omicidi,
su suolo europeo
portavano con loro
packed in white plastic bags
in sacchetti di plastica
come strumenti forensi
delle vittime,
very valuable forensic evidence
come preziosa prova forense
per crimini di guerra in corso.
occasionalmente chiamati
fisicamente gli oggetti,
estremamente difficoltoso,
e gli avvocati
che ci crediate o meno,
ogni singolo oggetto riesumato
consultare facilmente.
mi piace restituire alla comunità.
imparziale e accurato
items guarantee empathy.
garantisce empatia.
uno strumento,
quanto più vicina
tutte le persone scomparse,
in decomposizione
e questi oggetti quotidiani.
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