Ziyah Gafić: Everyday objects, tragic histories
ジーア・ガフィック: 身の回りの品に隠れた悲劇の歴史
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.
toothpaste and a toothbrush
歯磨き粉や歯ブラシといったものがあり
全く心積りもなかったことが
新たに発見された大きな墓から
主に民間人が行方不明となり
セルビア軍の手中に落ちた
破壊することなのです
脆く はかない遺体よりも
やがて薄れゆく記憶よりも
packed in white plastic bags
観たことがあるような
very valuable forensic evidence
法的証拠として使用されます
生存者が楽に閲覧できるように
社会に恩返ししたいのです
items guarantee empathy.
共感を呼び起こします
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