JENS OLOF LASTHEIN - MOMENTS IN BETWEEN

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Book Description: Journal, Stockholm, 2000. Hardcover.

Book Condition: New/Fine  

'Jens Olof Lasthein's Moments in Between is an impressive example of the new, artistically aware photojournalism. It deals with the murderous break-up of Yugoslavia following the erosion of the communist bloc. As each Balkan state reasserted its independence, the old divisions temporarily cemented together by Yugoslavia's strongman Marshal Tito reappeared, and the horrible phrase 'ethnic cleansing' entered the vocabulary. Lasthein, typically, does not look at these vicious conflicts directly, but like a nineteenth-century photographer he documents the landscape of war rather than the war itself. In a series of luscious, even lyrical landscapes taken in Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia, he documents an urban topography and a social landscape blighted by war-scarred buildings, wrecked cars, piles of rubble; yet on the streets daily life continues as routinely as possible -- women shop, children play, men work. This is the reality of a war zone: long, uneasy moments of no fighting, menaced by the continual threat of further violence. Thus Lasthein deals with the poetry rather than the hyperbole of war. He is concerned 'with daily life in the shadow of a war. Between shellings, after ethnic cleansing, or before a shot is fired.' A tower block, three of its windows glowing with light, is seen against a background of snow-covered hills at twilight, it is a scene of almost banal normality, but the building is battered, having been hit by numerous shells and bullets. Moments in Between is a book that can be placed alongside George N. Barnard's great volume on General Sherman's campaign (1866; see Volume I, page 45). But whereas Barnard could only deal with the physical topography of war, Lasthein, by virtue of his postmodern, media-wise stance, can also give us war's psychological face.' (From 'The Photobook: A History, Volume II,' by Martin Parr, p. 253). 

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