From Our Archives: Ron Haviv
Ron Haviv, Senad Medanovic, sole survivor of a massacre finds his home in ruins after the Bosnian army recaptured his village from Serb forces. He is standing on what is believed to be a mass grave of sicty-nine people, including his family. 1995.
This interview was featured in Issue No.21 - Risk
Andrea Blanch: How do you stay focused on your work while you’re in the midst of these heart-wrenching situations?
Ron Haviv: I disagree with the premise that the camera is a protection from emotion. In reality, the camera's magnifying the situation. I think that if I feel no emotion when I'm taking the photograph then it doesn't come across in the photo, therefore it will have no impact with the viewer. For me, the key has been trying to find the balance between finding that emotion and not being overwhelmed by it to the point where I'm not able to work. The emotions become overwhelming for me when I'm back home. There have been many times when I've been upset in the field; I've cried in the field, and I've cried at home. The key for my work is to make sure that it doesn't feel robotic, that the work has an emotional element to it because I want to create a relationship between the image and the viewer so the viewer can't look away. The viewer has to, at the very least, remember the image, react to it, and learn something from it for it to have some impact.
Ron Haviv, Arkan's Tigers, a Serbian paramilitary unit, with dying Bosnian Muslim civilian victims during the battle for Bosnia in Bilijenia. The images of the executions are being used by the International War Crimes Trubunal as evidence. 1992.
Ron Haviv, A Muslim in Bijelina, Bosnia begs for his life after capture by Arkan's Tigers in the Spring of 1992.
Andrea: You want your photographs to have an impact, but what if they don't?
Ron: At the beginning that certainly was a question, but now I think that not every photograph will land but certainly a number of them can. Now I'm doing a documentary called Biography of a Photo, and I’m co-directing it with a professor from NYU. We're looking at the Panama photograph and another photograph from Bosnia and doing a biography of the photograph and seeing what happened once it left the camera and what impact that photograph had. Over the course of the last 28 years, the photographs that started out as pure news appearing in magazines and so on have transitioned into multiple levels and had multiple effects. Both photographs have appeared in art interpretations, been banned, used in education, been used in foreign policy, been used in propaganda, and had multiple effects on individuals who then saw that photograph and acted a certain way based on their experience.
For the full version of Ron Haviv’s interview, check out Issue No.21 - Risk
