Bosnia’s Unique Wartime Posters  

Bosnia’s Unique Wartime Posters  

by | 1 Feb, 2022 | Bosnia, Journeys, My books

I’m working on an epic book that’s coming out in May this year: Bosnian War Posters, by Daoud Sarhandi. It’s an incredible collection of propaganda and art that he and Alina Wolfe Murray, my ex-wife, collected just after the war in Bosnia Herzegovina. It’s taken a long time to come to life but that’s another story.

The posters are arranged chronologically, with long captions, and it tells the story of Bosnia’s war. Young people in Bosnia Herzegovina are particularly interested because they don’t learn about the war in school – it’s too recent, too raw, too politicised – and they want to learn about it so they can avoid the mistakes of their parents. Young Bosnians also want to see how people communicated before the internet.

Many of the older Bosnians I’ve met, those who have experienced the war, don’t seem very interested in it; on the one hand they want to forget, while on the other hand they can’t stop thinking about it (or so I’m told).

Could we do books like this in other war-torn countries?

The reason I’m putting this article together is that I got a very inspiring audio messages from the author, on WhatsApp. It was in response to a discussion about possible future projects we could do in other parts of the world. “Surely”, I asked Daoud Sarhandi, “we could repeat what we did in Bosnia-Herzegovina? Surely there would be great material in other war zones, as good as what we had found in Bosnia?”

Daoud’s audio message (which I’ve transcribed below) gave me the insight I’d been looking for; it answers the question I’ve been asking myself: what makes our book, Bosnian War Posters, unique?

This is what Daoud said:

“The thing about Yugoslavia is that all the stars were aligned. We were in the right place at the right time, in a country which had a conscious design memory – or history – connected with Europe and Russia. One of our contributors, Bojan Hadžihalilović, says the war happened just before the internet and social media came into its own. I think the great poster campaigns the world witnessed in the past are over. Bosnia may have been the last war that used posters to such effect.

“Artists like Began Turbić, Asim Đelilović, and others are valuable as their posters and concepts are original, unique, and self-generated. I was recently thinking about doing a similar book about the Spanish Civil War as some of the work is beautifully drawn and designed. However, Spanish Civil War posters were produced by propaganda agencies on both sides rather than individual artists. They were just churning out very formulaic stuff and you actually learn very little from this material about the war as a whole, or what the people were really feeling. That’s not true about the posters we found in Bosnia Herzegovina. I think Began Turbić’s work, for example, is stunning compared to anything that came out of Barcelona or Madrid.

“Also, the only surviving Spanish Civil War posters are from the conquered cities. There’s almost nothing from small places and nothing independent left. This is not true of the material we found in Bosnia Herzegovina, as we were able to visit the most remote locations just after the war as well as scores of individual artists.

“What we found is absolutely unique. Not only in terms of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but in terms of world heritage. I can’t think of any war in history that generated such a rich heritage of original poster art, and the interesting thing is that it was genuinely independent in that most of the work we collected was produced by individual artists, working alone, and the government and army seemed to ignore them. It was a moment in time that’s not going to come back. It was something that doesn’t happen everywhere and probably will never happen again.

“In 2004 I went to Palestine to investigate doing a poster book about the Israeli/Palestine war. I travelled with an expert in the field, Dana Bartlett, an American design professor teaching in Prague. She’d already done an art book on some of those posters called Both Sides of Peace. At my suggestion, we went to do another book, a bigger one, and I spent two months in Palestine, mostly in Ramallah, talking to artists and designers, as I had done in the former Yugoslavia (in 1997/98). I thought I could repeat the process in Palestine.

“But all I found was visual dross. A lot of great people, for sure, and some great artists – but no inspiring design. What I found was loads of photoshopped posters with the words Islamic Martyr in Arabic, and a young guy holding up an AK47. After you’ve seen a hundred of these posters – which are more of less the same – you realise there’s no story of design here. I understand it culturally, and I respect it, and in its own way it is interesting, but it isn’t artistically inspiring or even very educational.

“But my Palestinian trip wasn’t wasted as I ended up making a great documentary film, The Colour of Olives.

“Sophisticated design doesn’t really happen in most countries. You could go to loads of conflict zones – Iraq, Syria, Rwanda, Yemen, wherever – and I’m sure you wouldn’t find much – you wouldn’t find a body of design work expressing lots of different aspects of the experience. You might find one or two artists doing something interesting, or quirky, but you wouldn’t find enough for a book. And then you’d have to know a lot about the war. To do what we did with the captions, you’d have to know all the ins-and-outs of that conflict.

“Islamic countries are particularly problematic in this design regard, which is why Bosnia Herzegovina was such a unique situation because there’s an Islamic element in this very special European country. But Islam generally is not very encouraging about modern graphic design. It’s just a fact. If you look at the history of Islamic art, it’s mainly decorative. When I met graphic designers and illustrators in Palestine they complained to me about this, that Islam doesn’t doesn’t like art to be confrontational. Art in Islamic countries celebrates the divine; flowers, symmetry, and non-human representation. You get lots of floral motifs, and calligraphy, and very little that is confrontational in the way that western audiences understand it. It’s a different thing altogether.

“Could we do a poster book in Lebanon? I doubt it. Syria? I don’t think so. What’s more I’ve got no motivation to do a big investigation, going round knocking on doors in another country. I don’t have the energy for that, plus I have a young family that I can’t just leave.

“I’m very, very proud of Bosnian War Posters. As a book it’s beautiful and we managed to save so much of the Bosnian’s wartime experience that would undoubtedly have been lost. As far as I know, we were the only people going around collecting all this material in a systematic way. I think the Bosnians didn’t quite appreciate its value, plus they were exhausted after the conflict. They’d had enough of the whole bloody mess. Sometimes outsiders see things that locals don’t in this regard – the distance helps. I knew from the go get that it was all very special and I’m glad we helped to preserve this bit of their cultural heritage.”

What’s unique about this book of posters?

There is a second part to answering this question: putting it into context. This was done rather brilliantly by Carol A. Wells, who runs the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles. She wrote a foreword which puts the book into historical and artistic perspective:

“It is not surprising that so many artists made posters during the Bosnian War as they are one of the most accessible, easily disseminated, and popular art forms to express conflict and resistance. What may surprise those who are seeing these posters for the first time is their variety, abundance, and often extraordinary design…

“Although few of these Bosnian posters are well known, many of them may look familiar because they incorporate images from advertising, fine art, film posters, album covers, and popular culture…

“The Bosnian posters in this book incorporate Western art from prehistoric to Renaissance, from Pop to Punk. The referenced art includes work by Massacio, Durer, Leonardo, Picasso, and Warhol. Posters that were originally made for World Wars I and II, and the Spanish Civil War, were ‘redesigned’ for the Bosnian War. The familiarity of these shared cultural references draws us in.”

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Artists in Bosnia Herzegovina were able to draw on this rich history of ancient and modern art as many of them had been through a classical education at Sarajevo’s renowned School of Art, where great art is studied over many years. I was at this art school recently and can confirm that it’s still going strong — and the students I met are very keen to see our new book of wartime posters.

My own interpretation of the Bosnian War posters is that it was the only way that artists in Bosnia-Herzegovina could protest about what was happening. As electricity was heavily restricted, the only mass media they had occasional access to was the radio. These shortages made the poster all the more powerful as a means of communication. The same didn’t apply to the other warring parties, Croatia and Serbia, which had fully functional mass-media and national propaganda systems. Although we collected some posters from these countries, very few wartime posters were produced as they didn’t really need them. But we got a few from the start of the war in Croatia as well as some interesting magazine covers from Belgrade.

What I didn’t appreciate until very recently was the level of freedom Bosnian artists had to express themselves – which is ironic considering that the Bosnian people were effectively hemmed in, geographically, by their enemies. They were imprisoned by external forces but their spirits were free.

A Sneak Peak

Finally, I’d like to share with you a couple of images from the book, and I’ll quote from Carol Wells’ foreword which puts them into context:

“A poster titled ‘HEEELP’ by Began Turbić used photomontage to transform an Orthodox Christian-style cross into a swastika by attaching traditional peasant-made brushes to the ends of the cross. Sixty years earlier, the German artist John Heartfield used this technique to create a swastika out of four bloody axes. Heartfield’s 1934 work was ironically titled ‘Blood and Iron,’ which was the motto of the Third Reich.

“Heartfield was one of the originators of photomontage, and made many anti-fascist magazine covers and posters using this technique. Turbić’s use of photomontage to create a swastika thus connects the past with the present.  The average viewer may not have known this reference, but it would have been recognized by other political poster makers, as Heartfield is often considered one of the earliest designers of mass-produced protest posters.

 

 

Find out more

We’ll be launching a crowdfunding appeal soon, to offer discounted copies of the book to Bosnians everywhere as well as anyone who supports this great country. If you’d like to get more information about this please send me (Rupert) an email: wolfemurray@gmail.com

The headline photo of this article was produced by Trio studios during the war. It’s a re-interpretation of the Coca-Cola symbol and it’s printed on the back of an old army map, as paper was in such short supply.

If you’d like to see more of the Bosnian War Posters just follow this hashtag on Instagram: #bosnianwarposters

As always, I’d be most grateful if you could leave a comment under here. All feedback is useful, every voice is valid and every perspective is true to itself. I’m particularly keen to hear from young Bosnians as I’ve been so impressed by those I’ve met so far. I intend to give more talks in Bosnian schools when I go back to Bosnia Herzegovina later this month.

Finally, if you’d like to know why I got involved in this project, see this article: Why I moved to Bosnia

 

Visiting Srebrenica: Negative Expectations; Positive Impressions

Visiting Srebrenica: Negative Expectations; Positive Impressions

by | 26 Aug, 2021 | Bosnia, Journeys

Srebrenica is so much more than a small town on the eastern border of Bosnia. It’s a name that is associated with genocide. The number 8,372 is often mentioned alongside the name of the town, as that’s the number of unarmed men and children who were killed there by Serbian forces in July 1995. For me it’s a reminder that extreme nationalism lies dormant within my own country and, if we’re not aware of it, the same thing could happen at home. Brexit and Trump are rather tame examples of what can happen if nationalism is let off the leash.

These were my thoughts on the long bus journey from Sarajevo to Srebrenica. I noticed the date, July 2021, and realised that it was exactly 26 years since the genocide. What would I find there?

My reason for visiting Srebrenica was not very noble: I was looking for dirt. My mission was to photograph graffiti or posters that celebrated the Bosnian-Serb war criminals who had organised the genocide. Some images like this would be useful for the book of Bosnian War Posters that I’m working on. I’d seen plenty of material like this when I was last in Bosnia, over 20 years ago, and assumed it would be plentiful – even though the denial of genocide had just become outlawed in Bosnia (resulting in the Serbian part of the Bosnian government going on strike).

But I didn’t find any nationalist graffiti at all in Srebrenica, even in the grubby backstreets. I was surprised as this town had been emptied of its Muslim majority, populated by Serbs from elsewhere and I assumed it was a hotbed of extreme hatred against Muslims. My expectations were being overturned.

In the centre of town is a vast mural that takes up the whole side of a building. Here’s my photo of it:

I didn’t pay much attention to this mural when I first saw it as I didn’t really like it, but later on I realised it’s verging on the arrogant to dismiss a mural as it doesn’t fit my personal standards of high art. But when I read the words on the signposts I realised that this is an extraordinary piece of work. The words translate as PEACE, HAPPINESS, THE FUTURE AND SUCCESS.

I had come to Srebrenica looking for evidence of hatred and support of extreme nationalism but what I found was a massive mural celebrating hope and peaceful coexistence. What’s more, there were no traces of graffiti on that mural and, to me, this suggests that it’s accepted by everyone.

And the positive impressions kept on accumulating: I went into a basic restaurant where a Muslim family (the women were wearing white headdresses) were being politely served; there was an elderly Muslim lady waiting outside the supermarket and none of the passers by gave her a dirty look or made sneering comments; and I heard various stories that the small number of Muslims who have returned to the area were fully accepted, even welcomed, by the local Serbs.

Later on I went to the massive graveyard where the 8,372 victims are commemorated. It’s a place of beauty with thousands of carved, marble headstones. On the other side of the road is an empty factory where a superb exhibition about the genocide has been put together, focusing on the UN forces who showed incredible weakness in not standing up to the Serbian aggressors.

Visiting that graveyard is a powerful experience but what impressed me the most was the complete absence of anti-Muslim graffiti outside the site. There were two large security booths but both were empty. I couldn’t help thinking that if this had been in the UK there may well have been all sorts of vicious comments daubed onto every available surface. Although this type of hatred is reasonably well controlled in the UK, I’m under no illusion that there are a lot of people who would like nothing better than to massacre people of a different colour, religion or ethnicity. I feel there is more anger and hatred on the ground in my own country than there is here. That’s why I can’t blame the Serbs for what they did – I blame nationalism. Nationalism is like an intoxicating drug which can make people do things they would normally consider totally irrational. For me, whisky has that effect: give me half a bottle of whisky and I lose all fear and become inflated with wild recklessness.

The positive impressions kept piling up. I had a friend in Srebrenica, a filmmaker called Ado Hasanovic, and he was working with some volunteers at what can best be described as a housing estate: about ten big houses, and some sports grounds, within a large compound. I was introduced to the volunteer manager, Mirela Ahmetbegovic, and she explained that every year between 70 and 90 volunteers are recruited for the summer holidays and they visit single old ladies in the area and do all sorts of building projects. She pointed to the houses and told me that, in prior years, they had all been built by volunteers. During term time the buildings are used to house children from the outlying villages, children who are too remote to attend primary school. What an incredible project and I take my hat off to the charity behind it: The International Forum of Solidarity: Emmaus.

My final positive impression of Srebrenica was hitchhiking, a means of travel that’s virtually impossible in my own country, as people have become too suspicious and fearful. I hitched twice around Srebrenica and on both occasions something unique happened: the first car that went by stopped. I’ve hitchhiked in many countries of Europe as well as in Tibet – the draft title of my first travel book was Hitching to Shanghai – but never has this happened to me before. The first car almost never stops, and it certainly doesn’t happen twice. Anyone who has hitchhiked will know that you don’t get a lift unless you’ve first stood at the side of the road for hours on end and have almost given up the will to live.

Making sense of it all

On my way back to Sarajevo I felt glad that my negative expectations had been replaced with such positive impressions. I was particularly struck by how there was a real atmosphere of tolerance on the ground and no sign of the hatred that had caused such devastation 26 years ago. But how to explain it? How to understand how a peace-loving people had got involved in genocide?

It’s all very well blaming it all on nationalism, but what does that actually mean on the ground? What happened? How did neighbour turn against neighbour? What was the methodology used to activate people’s deepest fears?

The most obvious conclusion is that people who live together in communities – villages, towns and cities – get on with each other whatever the religion, nationality or ethnicity. Ordinary communities have enough flexibility and understanding to overcome the occasional outrage. But when political leaders and sections of the news media get their teeth into extreme nationalism, the results are predictable: as a new version of reality is crafted the truth becomes the first victim; all problems are laid at the door of “the other” as well as imminent threats of attack; people are worked up into such a frenzy of anger, fear and hatred that carrying out acts of violence flows almost naturally. And, like an addiction, stopping nationalist-fuelled-rage is incredibly difficult.

My understanding of how it worked on the ground is based on what I’d heard just after I moved to Tuzla, just after the Bosnian war (1992-95), and also from what I read. Before the war, each village, town and city in Bosnia was made up of people who were associated – by religion – with the Muslim, Croat or Serb identity. During the Yugoslavia era, when Bosnia-Herzegovina was one of 6 republics that made up the nation, all these ethnic groups got on well with each other– despite the horrors that had taken place in the Second World War. But, when the Serbs released the demon of nationalism, these ethnic divisions became the flash points for war.

But these people had been neighbours all their lives and there was no way they were going to turn on each other, drive them out and kill anyone who objected. Apart from anything else, they didn’t have any weapons. The local Bosnian Serbs were decent people and they knew that their Muslim and Croat neighbours were too, despite Serbian propaganda being pumped out at the time that warned of an impending Islamic attack and resurgent Croatian fascism. The Serbian message at the time was: We must attack before we are annihilated!

What mobilised the local Serbs to action was the appearance of the Serbian death squads, like Arkan’s Tigers. These units had been covertly sponsored by the government in Serbia and were made up of experienced soldiers, some with French Foreign Legion experience, all with a hunger for killing. What they would apparently do when they turned up in peaceful, multi-ethnic communities in Bosnia, and Croatia, would be to gather together as many local Serb men as they could. They would warn these men about the imminent danger they were in from the (imaginary) forces of Croatian fascists and Islamic fundamentalists who were about to descend on the town and urge them to take immediate action before it was too late. The death squad would order all Muslims and Croats to leave town and if there were any objections they would start the killing. I’m not sure to what extent the local Serbs were involved in these massacres but that’s not the point – they were implicated. By not standing up to these death squads and their crimes these local Serbs had become complicit in crimes against humanity.

After the death squads left town the local Serbs would be left behind, no doubt with a guilty conscience about what had happened. But what could they do? If they admitted to having seen any atrocities they could be implicated so it must have felt safer to just keep quiet and deny any knowledge of what happened.

The good news is that people on the ground all over this beautiful country want nothing more than to live together in harmony. The problem is that the vast majority of people in Bosnia-Herzegovina don’t vote.

I took the photo linked to this article, of the graffiti saying NEVER GIVE UP, at the EMMAUS volunteer centre in Srebrenica. The dates commemorate the genocide and I was there exactly 26 yeas later, glad to see that the massacre hadn’t been eradicated from the scene of the crime. What I love about the message Don’t Give Up is that it applies to Serb and Muslim alike, it’s relevant to anyone regardless of their ethnicity, religion or gender.