Often referred to as the “powder-kegs of the Mediterranean”, both Balkans and the
Middle East have been the stage of serious armed confl icts throughout the entire
last century, whereas they both marked the turn of the 20th and the beginning of
the 21st centuries. In both cases, what we witnessed has been a dispute between
two or more national identities with claims over the same area of land. Tensions
deriving from the multicultural – multinational character of the population led to
the emergence of a series of issues related to political and geographical dominance.
The images selected in this exhibition, followed by their original captions, are
probably of the less “bloody” the particular photographers have taken. Αrguably,
this selection is determined by the idea that war is an extremely complex matter:
no war is simply “good” or “bad” and nobody involved is merely a “persecutor” or a
“victim”. They talk about destruction, loss, fear, mourning, survival, or uncertainty
about the future. They ultimately talk about a heterogeneous world, a global space
drawn by borders and separated by walls, a world which is neither small nor simple.
Penelope Petsini