Alan Chin, a photojournalist for the New York Times who covered the war in Kosovo said that powerful images of civilian suffering in the conflict ‘perhaps had influence on policies in the US and London’.

New York-based photojournalist Alan Chin said during a lecture at BIRN’s Reporting House in Prishtina on Monday that images published in the media during the 1998-99 Kosovo war affected Western attitudes to the conflict.

“Kosovo was one of those places where the work we did had an impact. Perhaps our work influenced policies in the US and London,” Chin told the audience.

Chin reflected on his work documenting funerals, protests and the refugee crisis in Kosovo, emphasising how photographs of the war’s human toll, such as the haunting image of Ali Pacarizi, a slain Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA fighter, helped attract international attention and hastened intervention.

“This is a very powerful photo of a young man killed by Serbian forces, which later became widely recognised. We attended many funerals. I consider that it’s very difficult to take meaningful photos. I’ve always been more interested in the impact that photos would have,” he said.

“In this case, the body was already prepared for burial. People saw that maybe if foreign media could document the situation, it would lead to some kind of change,” he added.

Chin said the international response to Kosovo was quicker because of “guilt” over the failure to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The single biggest reason why things worked here is because of the guilt stemming from the case of Bosnia, where not enough was done for too long. The intervention here has a unique history,” he added.

“This is one of the places where I’ve noticed the most change since I returned, compared to other regions in the former Yugoslavia,” Chin remarked.

Chin, who has also covered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,  noted that his initial interest in the region was sparked by observing the fall of Yugoslavia.

“For my generation, we watched the fall of Yugoslavia unfold. There was much talk about what was happening in the 1980s, and it was shocking to witness that from a distance.”

He added that in 1995, people saw images from Srebrenica, Sarajevo, Mostar, and all the terrible events happening in both Bosnia and Croatia.

“I thought to myself, ‘I should be there, I should be taking these pictures.’ So, I quit my job and went to Sarajevo where the war had just ended,” Chin stated.

Chin first visited Kosovo in 1997 during a student protest. “We had heard there would be peaceful protests, and we came just to see how it would unfold. We were unaware of all the divisions between communities, including language barriers,” he added.

He returned in 1998 after the Recak/Racak massacre and again in 1999, documenting scenes from the refugee crisis and the chaos at the border with Albania and North Macedonia.

“Access to the Serbian side was much worse. They thought we were making them look like ‘the bad guys,’” he recalled.

Chin said that it was always the civilians’ plight that drew his attention.

“We followed who was suffering, who was being killed, and what was happening to the civilians,” he said.

The New York Times photographer also recalled a moment when he photographed the notorious Serbian criminal Zeljko ‘Arkan’ Raznatovic at a football match in Fusha Kosova/Kosovo Polje in 1999.

“He had a football club [FK Obilic] and came for a visit at that time. He had this group of paramilitaries who were doing the dirty work, and the worst part was that they weren’t official,” China said.

Arkan was the most notorious Serbian paramilitary chief of the 1990s wars. His unit, the Serbian Volunteer Guard, known as Arkan’s Tigers, was accused of committing war crimes across the former Yugoslavia. It was believed that he was covertly backed by Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Belgrade.

Chin recalled that when Arkan noticed the journalists at the match, he challenged them, saying: “You are not sports photographers.”

The Reporting House exhibition, which opened in June, is presenting a cross-section of journalism, photography and media artefacts from the 1998-99 war, positioned alongside contemporary artwork exploring and reflecting on the impact of the war in the decades since.

10 September 2024 – 11:09