Paolo Pellegrin: Kosovo, 1999-2000: The Flight of Reason

by Paolo Pellegrin, Tim Judah

In this photographic record of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Paolo Pellegrin has captured the hopeless, helpless plight of the refugees and their long walk to safety through the bare and beautiful countryside of that ravaged land. In the corridors of power there are contemplative and satisfactory murmurs after the catastrophe of the Balkans. They wink at each other; we have fooled most of the people most of the time, and therefore we have won. Never mind the dead; never mind the hatred; never mind the dispossessed. Now the Italian photographer Paolo Pellegrin has, for the first time, given the lie to these congratulations. For in Kosovo 1999 — 2000 he has documented the abject misery of the war, of the dislocation of reason, and of peoples, tribes, homes and society with no redress to Belgrade, London or Washington. By the end of the war almost 850,000 people out of a total population of two million had been displaced. In one night alone tens of thousands were rounded up by their Serb oppressors in Pristina and expelled on trains. And when the Albanians returned to Kosovo after the bombing their vengeance was swift. For those lost souls their villages were closed forever - they were bombed to rubble. There were no streets anymore; there were no gardens anymore; there were no hearths, or food to cook on them. There was, God forbid, no hope, only the pathetic and desperate locomotion of ruptured limbs across a landscape stark and terrible.

Genres: Photography

148 pages, Hardcover

First published July 2, 2002

About the author

Paolo Pellegrin was born in 1964 in Rome. He studied architecture at L'Università la Sapienza, Rome, Italy before studying photography at l'istituto Italiano di Fotografia, in Rome.

Between 1991 and 2001 Pellegrin was represented by Agence VU in Paris. In 2001 he became a Magnum Photos nominee and a full member in 2005. He was a contract photographer for Newsweek for ten years.

Pellegrin is winner of many awards, including ten World Press Photo awards and numerous Photographer of the Year awards, a Leica Medal of Excellence, an Olivier Rebbot Award, the Hansel-Meith Preis, and the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award. In 2006, he was assigned the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful though harrowing and depressing book about the war for Kosovo in 1999 and the plight of refuges. The photography is as gripping as it is dismal. Pellegrin does a first-rate job of creating a portrait of a very difficult time. Веома лепа фотографија—Грим још у време рата.