Sentimental Sundown Showdown #!

I am a sentimental being. Actually I’m not sure if that is the right word for what I feel in relation to listening to Steve Horn present his quasi-life long project on the land and people of Bosnia (Pictures Without Borders: Bosnia Revisited), but it is the way I can identify. Sparing the painfully obvious lesson of a human’s propensity to want to be able to grasp change, but hold on to past bits of time, even ones they themselves do not know, I want to wonder about photorgaphy’s ability to facilitate this tidal process of holding on and letting go. The ravages of dramatic conflict seem to instensify these feelings, and for me during a 2004 trip to Bosnia, the sense of emotional history is articulated all throughout the landscape and people.

It just so happens that Rineke Dijkstra, from 1996-2005, photographed a Bosnian Refugee named Almerisa, depicting, and seductively drawing the viewer to identify the changes of a person reflected against rapidly changing cultural and developmental status. Steve Horn was not so initially filled with intent. After graduating university in the 1970’s, Horn spent a year travelling through the Balkans living in his Volkswagen Bus documenting the land in front of him. It wasn’t until after the conflicts of the 1990’s that Horn realized how much he wanted to explore that space again. What resulted initially reads as a before and after comparison essay of sorts, delves deeper into the psychological residue of communities of people that despite years of turmoil, have not abandoned their land or their people. This process of healing is intrinsic to Horn’s photographs, but manifests differently in Nicholas Nixon’s epic documenting of The Brown Sisters where they have been brought together every year since 1975 to make a group portrait. This ritual bonding seems to solidify the whole with the weight of history…at least to me they seem stronger and stronger every year. Another who looks back to remember is Vik Muniz and his early Best of LIFE drawings in which he pits his memory against the most iconic photographs from LIFE Magazine, in order to break down our inability to objectively record history in our mind.