Canadian War Museum Exhibition Explores Personal Experiences of Yugoslav Conflict

Posted on: 26/01/2011

Canadian War Museum Exhibition Explores Personal Experiences of Yugoslav Conflict

Ottawa, Ontario, January 24, 2011 — During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, tens of thousands of men, women and children vanished. Missing Lives, a collaborative effort between acclaimed photographer Nick Danziger and Canadian authorRory MacLean, documents and commemorates the losses suffered by 15 families. 

The economic collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold War reignited the fires of historic ethnic nationalism and brought about the dissolution of the Republic. The factional fighting lasted from 1991 to 1995, and reached an intensity unseen in Europe since the Second World War. Most of the fighting took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in a later conflict in Kosovo in 1999.

Missing Lives wasdeveloped by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Since 1991, the ICRC in the Balkans has been asked by families to trace 34,278 missing people—almost 15,000 remain unaccounted for. Through photographs and words, Danziger and MacLean explore the international and personal efforts to find the missing and repatriate their remains.

“Missing Lives extends our understanding of the human experience of conflict,” said Mark O’Neill, Director General of the Canadian War Museum. “Although the personal stories featured in this exhibition represent only a tiny proportion of an immense tragedy, they provide an incredible amount of insight into the sense of loss suffered.”

The Canadian War Museum is currently the only Canadian stop for this exhibition on an international tour that has included Belgrade, Sarajevo, Pristina, Mostar, Banja Luka, Zagreb, Strasbourg, Brussels and Bern. 

The exhibition will run until September 5, 2011.

About Nick Danziger
Nick Danziger is an author, documentary filmmaker and photographer. His first book, Danziger’s Travels, was an immediate best-seller and has been reprinted more than a dozen times. He has made over 40 documentary films for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Channel 4 and The Discovery Channel, among which his film War, Lives and Videotape won the prestigious Prix Italia for best television documentary. In 2004, his photograph of then-US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair won first prize in the portrait category of the World Press Photo awards. His photography is regularly published in Britain and by Time, Newsweek, Paris Match, and L’Espresso.

Danziger’s images of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were the subject of the British Museum exhibition Tony Blair at War: Decision Iraq, which was shown at the Canadian War Museum in 2008.

About Rory MacLean
Born in Vancouver and raised in Toronto, Rory MacLean is an award-winning travel author.  His eight books, including best-sellers Stalin’s Nose and Under the Dragon, have taken him on j