Mujeres fotoperiodistas: La obra de Sandra Balsells a través de Balkan in memoriam (1991-2000)
María Peralta Barrios
Universidad de Burgos, España
María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez
Universidad de Burgos, España
Abstract:
Scientific research about female photojournalists in Spain is scarce as of today. Reasons like this evinces the need to reconstruct the history of photojournalism from the experience and contributions of women, with names like the protagonist of this research’s: Sandra Balsells. Through the compilation of biographical and curricular data, and through a detailed analysis of her work Balkan in Memoriam, the main objective of this article is to make visible the work that the Catalan photojournalist developed during the ten years of war in the Balkans; a conflict that was as long as it was intense. Despite the adversities she has had to face, Balsells's work has served to demonstrate that the truly important is not in the photograph itself, but in the people and situations which she portrayed, creating an important graphic legacy for history.
Resumen:
El trabajo académico dedicado a las fotoperiodistas en España es, a día de hoy, escaso. Razones como esta evidencian la necesidad de reconstruir la historia del fotoperiodismo desde la experiencia y aportaciones de las mujeres, con nombres como el de la protagonista de esta investigación: Sandra Balsells. A través de la recopilación de datos biográficos, curriculares, y un análisis en profundidad de su obra Balkan in memoriam, el objetivo principal de este artículo es dar a conocer el trabajo que la fotoperiodista catalana ejerció durante los diez años que duró la guerra de los Balcanes, un conflicto tan largo como intenso. A pesar de las adversidades a las que ha tenido que enfrentarse, la obra de Balsells ha servido para demostrar que lo verdaderamente importante no reside en la propia fotografía, sino en las personas y situaciones que retrató, creando un importante legado de carácter gráfico para la historia.
Keywords:
Photojournalists; women photographers; Balkan in memoriam; Balkan wars; Balsells.
Palabras clave:
Fotoperiodistas; mujeres fotógrafas; Balkan in memoriam; guerra de los Balcanes; Balsells.
1. Introduction
In July 1991, the Catalan photojournalist Sandra Balsells Cubells drove from London to the former Yugoslavia to cover what was supposed to be the disintegration of the country but suddenly led to the outbreak of war in Croatia. On this first trip as a member of The Times staff, Balsells faced two of the great challenges of a war photojournalist: One, witnessing death. Two, overcoming the shame of photographing it.
A professional photojournalist with three decades of experience, Balsells is best known for her work in the Balkans. She has focused almost all her efforts there, documenting the most significant episodes of the successive Yugoslav wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo from 1991 until the end of the 2000s. Balsells was the exception to the rule. A rara avis in a context that has historically been perceived as a profession associated with men, which, in addition to “social and cultural conventions that recommended women to stay out of armed conflicts, protected from any danger” (Folch, 2017, p. 3), has meant that she has operated in a predominantly male environment throughout her career.
Balkan in Memoriam (Balsells, 2002) is her magnum opus, in which she defends war reporting as an essential act, both for the citizen's right to information and so that those who study and analyse armed conflicts have the tools to write history as objectively as possible.
1.1. Photojournalism and war: the stereotype of the ‘second sex’
Traditionally, war has been considered a man's business, so the figure of the photojournalist can be compared to that of the warrior. It has been constituted as “an important reference of identity in male socialisation, where characteristics such as strength, resistance, courage, aggressiveness, risk, daring, have represented synonyms of virility, of manliness” (Londoño, 2005, p. 67). The myth of the 'war reporter' is an archetype inspired by heroic masculinity, capable of risking his life to provide a committed visual testimony (Chéroux, 2001, p. 307; Ribalta, 2004), and therefore difficult to apply to women (Peralta and Menéndez, 2022).
The characteristics associated with the war reporter (courage, resistance, freedom, search for truth and justice) function as mechanisms that symbolically exclude women and reinforce prejudices about what is considered appropriate for women and men, especially in the field work and in spaces labelled as masculine, dangerous or conflictual (García, 2020). Underpinned by the cultural, symbolic and institutional systems of Western societies, war reporting is articulated through a stereotype constituted around the figure of the white, Western, heterosexual male (Nead, 2002). As a result, anything that deviates from this pattern is grounds for exclusion.
While it is true that the presence of women in war reporting has increased over time, it is still insufficient. The reasons for this, which have persisted for decades, result from “an oriented social construction based on the persistence of gender stereotypes” (Ballesteros and Maira-Vidal, 2018, p. 1). On the one hand, we can highlight the exclusion that women have systematically suffered in the profession, being relegated to lower categories. Those in positions of power in the mainstream media, most of whom are men, are the ones who determine the lines of work, who decide to hire colleagues either with a paternalistic attitude “that justifies and promotes the need for infantile protection” (Fernández, 2011, p. 90), or with the conviction that women can jeopardise the cohesion of the group of special envoys. In short, they tend to dismiss them as not conforming to the social stereotype.
Secondly, these positions to which they are relegated are, on the one hand, “part of the patriarchal order that gives women's actions and experiences less social relevance than those of men” (Camarero, 2006, p. 24) and, on the other hand, a consequence of the difficulties that many photojournalists have in accessing positions of power within the major news agencies, as “priority has been given to men to obtain a place in the best international agencies” (Peralta, 2017, p. 41).
As a result, the bulk of the chronicle that has reached our days is that of a photographic production generated by male photojournalists, which has excluded and condemned to obscurity a large number of female photojournalists. But not all of them have remained there. Among them was Sandra Balsells. With the same aims and hopes as the Catalan photojournalist, other women decided to travel to the former Yugoslavia and use their cameras to show the horrors experienced by the civilian population. Although she met some of them in person, she got to know others from afar.
Alexandra Boulat (1962-2007), Corinne Dufka (1958), Anja Niedringhaus (1965-2014) and Nina Berman (1960) are the names of the other four women who, together with Balsells, were able to challenge the male clichés associated with the figure of the photojournalist. Especially in the mass media, which, when faced with female protagonists, tend to “feminise the figure of the formerly heroic war correspondent” (Osorio, 2010, p. 54), but to show men as “adventurous, fearless, hedonistic, gallant and independent professionals” (Diez, 2017, p. 236).
A stereotypical vision that shows how “the roles and functions assigned to men and women because of their gender are very different and insurmountable” (Padilla, 2009, p. 262). The influence of public opinion, as well as the lack of training in gender perspectives, means that we are faced with archetypes that citizens tend to perpetuate “simply because other people believe them, by social consensus” (Fernández, 2011, p. 89).
Looking directly at the profession, in 2017 Asunción Bernárdez and Ignacio Moreno published the article “Sesenta años del premio de fotoperiodismo Word Press Photo of the Year: una visión con perspectiva de género”, a study that revealed the scarcity of women: “Only four female photojournalists have won the award since its inception: François Delmulder in 1976, Dayne Smith in 1999, Lara Jo Regan in 2000 and Jodi Bieber in 2010” (Bernárdez and Moreno, 2017, p. 294).
For Esmeralda Ballesteros and María del Mar Maira, three prejudices operate simultaneously: women can't, women don't want to, and women have no endurance (Ballesteros and Maira, 2018, p. 115). Normalised, these arguments have historically acted as a barrier to access to many professions considered masculine, including photojournalism. Those who have managed to overcome this barrier and pursue their talent to work as photojournalists have had to “overcome discrimination and prove their professionalism as war reporters time and time again” (Del Paso, 2018, p. 13).
Some women have received numerous awards and honours, but remain little known. In the case of Boulat, for example, she received the Visa d'Or pour l'image (1998) for her coverage of the Balkans, the Paris Match Award (1998), the Eisenstat Prize (1999) for her coverage of Kosovo and the Harry Chapin Media Awards (1994) for her coverage of Sarajevo. Anja Niedringhaus has won a Pulitzer Prize; Nina Berman has received numerous awards, including a World Press Photo in the portrait category (2007) and a Hasselblad Master in the editorial category (2009); and Corinne Dufka, who has covered no fewer than seventeen armed conflicts, has won the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award (1996) and even the first World Press Photo Award in the spot news category (1996).
However, despite these merits and an exceptional body of work, they are virtually unknown photographers. Hence the need to create points of reference: to demonstrate their importance in the field, and to research, expose and publicise the work of many professionals who have been invisible for years.
2. Research Approach and Methodology
This article explores the work of women's war photojournalists through the work of Sandra Balsells. In addition to reviewing the photographer's biography and curriculum, through the analysis of Balkan in memoriam we have sought to establish a shared dialogue between text and image that has allowed us to interpret the research from the photographic language, the social quality of war photography and its importance for historical analysis. The main aim of this study is therefore to understand the full scope of the photojournalist's work: her leitmotif and her particular way of photographing, viewing and understanding photojournalism.
From a methodological point of view, an approach to women's war photojournalism is first constructed, offering a state-of-the-art on previous research on women professionals who have covered war fronts for the press. This is followed by a biography of the protagonist, with unpublished information provided by Balsells herself, to build a profile around her figure based on both her interests and her conception of the profession, aspects that will help to get to know the author in-depth and promote the recognition and visibility of her work. By using the interview as an instrument of social research, we have achieved not only the objective of collecting data, but also that of gaining access to the reality of the person interviewed. Following the approach of Díaz Bravo et al, who define the interview as a flexible dialogue that provides deeper and more detailed information (2013, p. 66), this tool has allowed us to reveal the interviewee's point of view rather than that of the researcher (Hernández, Fernández and Baptista, 2014).
Understanding the interview as a scientific dialogue, the twenty-four questions posed to the protagonist were pre-structured and fixed according to a specific order, covering aspects such as access and motivations that led her to choose the profession of photojournalist, specific questions about the work context or issues with a gender perspective. The information gathered from the dialogue with the interviewee gave us access to Balsells' inner world as well as her position on certain issues. In addition, further telephone conversations were held with her over several months to refine some of the data and confirm technical issues.
Finally, the third and final part of the article discusses the main features of Balkan in memoriam, chapter by chapter. Following a methodology based on Javier Marzal Felici's book Cómo se lee una fotografía. Interpretaciones de la mirada (2007), we carry out an analytical approach on the four levels proposed by the author: contextual, morphological, compositional and enunciative, offering a generalised reading of those headings where, for reasons of space, it has not been possible to include images, but carrying out a more exhaustive analysis of those that have been included in the article.
3. Photojournalists on the frontlines: the state of the art
Although there is some research on pioneering women war correspondents, the scarce documentation on the subject, especially in Spain, has only reinforced the stereotypes of the photojournalist described above. Internationally, Gerda Taro, Kati Horna, Martha Gellhorn or Lee Miller are figures recognised for their work in wartime conflicts (García, 2020; Muñoz, 2020; Carabias, 2016; Núñez, 2016; Arroyo and Doménech, 2015; Liu, 2015; Pelizzón, 2014; Rogoyska, 2013; Rodríguez, 2012; Jar, 2009; Schaber, 2006; Simón and Calle, 2005; Lambron, 2001). These women were not only pioneers in their respective fields but also made significant contributions to the visual and written understanding of the major social and political events of their time, as reported in the study of women reporters coordinated by Hannah Storm and Helena Williams (2012).
Storm and Williams' work is distinguished by its first-hand accounts through interviews with forty war journalists. Through their testimonies, the book offers an intimate insight into what it means to be a woman on the war front, providing an understanding not only of the impact of these reporters' work on society but also of the personal and emotional costs they face. The book contrasts the women's experiences with those of their male counterparts. While both face the danger, violence and stress of being on the front line, they often face additional risks, such as the possibility of sexual violence, assault or ostracism.
This monograph, while not limited to women press photographers, addresses the challenges faced by women and highlights an often underrepresented view of women on the war front, who, in addition to reporting the facts and focusing only on the military or political aspects, tend to document the personal and emotional consequences of war, adding a layer of complexity and humanity to the coverage. It algo analyses how women reporters face a double struggle: on the one hand, they have to deal with the violence and dangers inherent in war conflicts, and on the other, they have to face discrimination, sexism and the difficulties of being a woman in a world dominated by men. In the same vein, Irala (2023) explains that the different experience of socialisation between men and women means that, faced with the same reality, they do not have the same experience, so “in the professional, cultural and visual spheres, this different experience can mark profound contrasts in the production of images” (Irala, 2023, p. 139).
About the history of women photographers, it is also worth mentioning Val Williams, a British writer who in 1986 published The Other Observers: Women Photographers in Britain 1900 to the Present, a pioneering work in the Anglo-Saxon sphere. In the United States, Naomi Rosenblum published what is still the most complete and important work to date: A History of Women Photographers, a reference work for any research. Also of great value is the study by Martin W. Sandler Against the Odds: Women Pioneers in the First Hundred Years of Photography, as well as the compilation work of Peter Palmquist, who, in addition to founding Women in Photography International, has devoted years to identifying, collecting, preserving and disseminating information on women photographers. With more than thirty thousand references, the database created by Palmquist, which is open to the public, shows that the presence of women in this field is not marginal.
Other reference works include Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers, a volume by the photographer and activist Jeanne Moutoussamy; Fotógrafas en México 1872-1960, by José Antonio Rodríguez; Mujeres tras la cámara, a book by Cathy Newman published by National Geographic; and the three volumes of Clara Bouveresse's: Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Contemporaries, written under the title Women Photographers.
As far as Spain is concerned, there is an important tradition of women reporters in wartime conflicts, although, according to Elisa García (2020), it is poorly documented. For her, three works are fundamental: the monograph by Ana del Paso (2018), the article by Jar Couselo (2009) and the doctoral thesis by María José Ufarte (2011). However, these are not limited to the role of female photojournalists and when we find a more specific focus, such as those by García-Ramos (2019, 2018, 2017) or Irala (2023), the protagonists did not cover war conflicts or, as reported by Peralta and Menéndez (2022) or Tranche (2022). They documented other conflicts, such as terrorism and political violence. Although the role of female reporters has been rescued from oblivion, the specific contributions of Spanish photojournalists on war fronts, especially contemporary ones, have yet to be studied in depth. Works such as Parras and Cela (2014) or Volkmar (2023) do not include any female names. More common is the bibliography of foreign women photographers who covered the Spanish Civil War, such as the recent contribution by Izquierdo (2022) and others mentioned at the beginning of this section.
Without claiming to cover all the references published on women photographers in Spain, we feel it is important to briefly review those that have contributed to a new historiographical account of Spanish photojournalism. We begin with the work of Marie-Loup Sougez and María de los Santos García Felguera, pioneers in the recognition of Spanish women photographers who had previously been excluded from history; Mónica Carabias, with her research “Ojos de mujer. Aproximación a medio siglo de creación fotográfica en España”; Antonia Salvador, with the text “Mujeres tras la cámara. Fotógrafas en la Andalucía del siglo XIX”; María del Carmen Agustín and Sandra Tomás, authors of “Las primeras mujeres fotógrafas en Aragón: Pioneras y modernas"; "Mujeres corresponsales de guerra", an article by the aforementioned Gonzalo Jar Consuelo, published in Cuadernos de periodistas; Carmelo Vega, who includes an entire chapter on pioneer women photographers in his book Fotografía en España; and the work of Nieves Limón and Gloria Rosique from the research project “Género y Figura. Reivindicando a las mujeres fotógrafas”. This is a virtual space associated with the Carlos III University of Madrid that aims to make their work visible; last but not least, the book entitled Fotoperiodistas de guerra españoles, an exhaustive work of documentation by Rafael Moreno and Alfonso Bauluz that brings together the heritage of the best Spanish photojournalists from their beginnings, among whom the only woman is Sandra Balsells.
4. Sandra Balsells: War Photographer
Sandra Balsells is relatively unknown to the general public. The decision to focus on her figure in this article is due to the academic gap that exists about her and, in particular, about her photographic work in the Balkan war. The aim is to create a new narrative that will allow us to discover a photojournalist with a first-rate body of work.
Throughout her life, the Catalan photographer has always wanted to experience history first-hand, and photojournalism has been the tool that has allowed her to do so. Since the beginning of her photographic activity in the 1990s, she has managed to become a reference in photojournalism, carving out a niche for herself in a field such as war, which, as Virginia Woolf said in 1938, is for men “a source of happiness and amusement; it is also a channel of virility” (1999, p. 16). As Balsells herself notes, in the war “the majority of journalists were men, the military were men, the militias were men” [1]. This implies that, at best, women were “seen as anomalies” (Pedelty, 1997, p. 40). At worst, they became subordinates, wives or companions of male figures.
Balsells, who admits that in her early days she did not know any women and all her referents were men, affirms that now it is women photographers who are the protagonists of her photojournalism classes at the university:
I talk about Cristina García Rodero because it seems to me that you can't live without knowing her work. I talk about Annie Leibovitz, the best portrait photographer of the last forty years; I talk about Joana Biarnés, the first Spanish photojournalist and a great friend of mine; and above all I talk about the activist photography through Donna Ferrato, with her work on gender violence, and Leticia Battaglia, with her work on the Mafia. This is not on purpose, they are the best at it.
Born in Barcelona in 1966, Sandra Balsells and her siblings were the first generation of their family to be born in Barcelona. Like many families at the time, her parents were part of the waves of Catalans who moved to the Barcelona metropolitan area in search of a better and more prosperous future for their families. Influenced from an early age by her father, who was a great lover of photography and cinema, Sandra Balsells always had a knowledge of the world of images far beyond that of her peers. But at that time her passion was not photography; that would come later: “My first vocation, from a very young age, was journalism”, she says without hesitation.
Far from being a passing fancy, as the years went by and she grew up, her fascination with the world of the press only increased, which, as she admits, "made it a lot easier for me because I didn't have to make any big decisions about what I wanted to do in life”. In 1984 she began a journalism degree at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. On her father’s advice, she started studying photography at the Institut d'Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya while she was still at university. At the time, she had no idea that she would become a photographer, nor did she know what was to follow.
In 1990 she won a scholarship to do a postgraduate course in photojournalism at the London College of Printing[2]. There, she discovered that the two disciplines she had studied in Spain, journalism and photography, had become one. Her career as a photojournalist began. The professional opportunity offered by the London University School through internships in major media was unique. Balsells knew how to make the most of this opportunity, choosing to work for two prestigious but very different newspapers: The Times and The Guardian.
While she was training as photographer at The Times, a historic event took place that fascinated the Catalan photojournalist: the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Without hesitation, she saw this as a great opportunity to experience a unique event first-hand, and with great determination she offered herself to the newspaper to cover the events. To her surprise, the picture editor accepted her proposal and “two days after I went to his office to explain the story, I was driving from London to the former Yugoslavia”.
While her first trip had been to cover the disintegration of the country, she suddenly found herself covering the outbreak of war in Croatia. “It was a catastrophe for me”, she says. So much so, that when she returned to London, she found it difficult to reconcile herself to normality: “I was in London, but deep down I was obsessed with going back”. She travelled more than fifteen times in the first decade of the 1990s. On the frontline, she witnessed the horror and suffering of three wars, the consequences of which were devastating. In 1992, she lost her partner, the photojournalist Paul Jenks[3]. A murder that “plunged me into a very, very long depression from which I found it very difficult to emerge because of the shock it caused”. She was twenty-six at the time.
She photographed everything she could with her Canon AE1 programme. At that time, the digital revolution was yet to come and film was used. In the early years of the nineties, the rules of the photographic market were different, as was the way of generating material. The immediacy that is so important today was not taken into account, there was no internet and communication between countries lacked the means of transport we have today.
As a freelancer, she has worked for national and international media. The New York Times, The Toronto Star, The Observer, Today, Evening Standard, La Vanguardia, El Mundo, Avui, The Times and El Temps were just some of them. Although her freelance status gave her more freedom and autonomy than her staff colleagues, it was also exhausting. Apart from the fieldwork, which is draining, Balsells finds it more tiring to “call the media, pitch the story, get a negative response... it's all very frustrating” when there is no need to “look for clients under the rocks”. This shows that, even among the elite of photojournalism, there is an “enormous difficulty in financing projects”. But there is a limit to everything. Sandra Balsells must have thought when she took the drastic decision to stop working for the press.
Since 1995 she has combined her work as a photojournalist with teaching at the Universitat Ramon Llull. She has also managed to diversify her income through various activities, including participation in more than fifty group and solo exhibitions; as author of the book Balkan in memoriam and co-author of Montreal Metrople vue par 30 grands reporters (Aux Yeux du Monde, 2000); through lectures in academic and university spaces and as curator of photographic projects, including: Latidos de un mundo convulso (2007) and Desaparecidos (2011). In the field of television, she is the co-author of the documentaries Dying for the Truth, about the murder of Paul Jenks, and Retratos del Alma. The latter, directed by Ángel Leiro, recounts in the first person her reunion with some of the victims she photographed during the war. This work, which she admits was “very satisfying, very exciting”, won her the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Prize in 2006 in the category of Best Informative Work, making her the first female photojournalist to receive this award.
Although much of her career has focused on the Balkans, her work for national and international media has taken her to many other destinations: Cuba, Haiti, Mozambique, Canada, Israel, Palestine, Mexico, El Salvador and Italy are some of them. Her work during Easter Week in Sicily, her second major project, deserves special mention. Fascinated by the behaviour of the inhabitants of the Italian island, she has documented how Sicilian society experiences Easter. According to the photographer herself, “It was a way of making a sympathetic subject and experiencing it differently”. It is a work that inevitably recalls that of Cristina García Rodero in España Oculta, since it focuses on the behaviour generated around the religious ritual.
But if the Catalan photojournalist stands out for anything, it is for being the first. The trust placed in her by The Times when it sent her to cover the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia made her, according to the bibliography analysed, the first Spanish war photojournalist within the concept of modern photojournalism as we know it today[4].
The Catalan photographer has been able to demonstrate that covering a war is not just a man’s thing and that being a woman is sometimes beneficial: “you go unnoticed or you are seen as a less invasive, less aggressive person than a man”. For her way of working, which seeks to immerse herself in the culture and be part of local life, not drawing attention to herself “is very important, it is basic”. Aware of the challenge of being a conflict photojournalist in the first decade of the nineties, her perseverance and dedication to the profession earned her excellence in her work and the recognition of the sector. The photojournalist does not hesitate to affirm that she has always been treated with consideration and that she has never suffered derogatory treatment due to her female condition: “I have been very lucky and I have worked with people with whom I have felt very good”.
Balsells has lived and photographed crucial events in history. Her career has marked a before and after in Spanish war reporting, paving the path for other women who, following in her footsteps, have decided to break the mould and show that they can provide equal or better coverage than their male counterparts in any conflict. They are even gaining access to certain circles from which men are excluded, simply because they are men.
5. Balkan in memoriam: a unique testimony
The Balkan war took place in the context of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The death of its supreme leader, Josip Broz ‘Tito’, in 1980 marked a break with the policy of unity and fraternity that the dictator had worked so hard to establish, in favour of nationalist positions that sought independence. In the absence of a unifying leader, the defections of Slovenia and Croatia heralded a rupture that was confirmed by their declarations of independence in June 1991. The Yugoslav army, unwilling to lose two of its territories, launched a war against the Croats and Slovenes.
In 1992, Bosnia declared its independence, leading to a civil war that would become the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. But the Balkan war did not end there. In 1998, another conflict broke out, this time between Serbs and Albanians over the territory of Kosovo. Ten years of fighting resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, millions of displaced people, and the disintegration of a territory that left the rest of the world perplexed and unable to understand how such a thing could happen in Europe at the dawn of the 21st century.
Balkan in Memoriam is a journey through that tumultuous decade, in which Sandra Balsells, journey after journey, provides a unique and singular testimony to the successive wars that took place on the Balkan Peninsula. Through her photography, she manages to transport anyone interested in observing her into a space-time slice. Temporally, “because the photographic act interrupts, stops, immobilises, fixes” (Marcos, 2016, p. 18), and spatially, because through her images she “fragments, isolates, separates” (ibidem), extracting a piece of the overwhelming and terrifying scenario that she photographed.
The book, published in 2002 and containing 83 photographs, is underpinned by the author's commitment to showing that after a war there is a post-war period and that the victims of any conflict, regardless of place and time, evoke the same suffering. But Balkan in Memoriam is much more than that. It is also, in the words of John Sweeney, a British journalist with whom Balsells shared those years of pain and blood and also the grief over the loss of Paul Jenks, a sample of that “imminent history, an evocation of past suffering that goes deep into the heart of a tormented humanity” (Sweeney in Balsells, 2002, p. 26). These words, written by Sweeney in the prologue, are not only accurate but also the foundation on which the Catalan artist's work is built.
The process of editing the book was, in Balsells' words, “long, laborious and involved a lot of reflection”. Considering that she shot a total of 323 rolls of 36 exposures between 1991 and 2000, she had to select the photographs to be published from a total of around 11,500. But she did not do it alone. She did the initial viewing herself, as she already had a clear idea of which photographs she wanted to appear in the analysed copy, but to make the final selection she enlisted the help of three colleagues: Antonio Espejo, Bru Rovira and Xavier Martín. The final selection, made by the editor Leopoldo Blume, fulfils the author's aim of obtaining a varied but balanced result, capable of offering a “multifaceted, very broad vision so that all the protagonists of a conflict could be included. From the troops to the refugees, the wounded, the dead, the destruction...”.
On a photographic level, Balsells' book is undoubtedly a work worthy of analysis. Divided into seven chapters containing nineteen, thirteen, eight, eleven, nine, twelve and eleven photographs, respectively, which we will analyse below combining the different levels (contextual, morphological, compositional and enunciative) proposed by Marzal Felici (2007), Balkan in Memoriam covers the whole possible spectrum of a war. The author includes chronicles that precede the photographic development of the seven chapters, texts written by Balsells himself to bring us closer to the reality that took place. Like a personal diary, these written words are, according to the most traditional historiography, a “primordial, omnipotent, not to say exclusive source for making history” (Lara, 2005, p. 6). A textual resource that, in addition to images, can offer both the public and the academic world a unique opportunity to “actually witness, even at a considerable distance in time, the events they are studying” (Galasso, 2001, p. 267).
5.1. The End of Yugoslavia (Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991-1994)
The first chapter of Nineteen Photographs begins with an image of Serb militiamen on the front line in Borovo Selo, Croatia. This scene provides us with the contextual level that characterises the photograph. It is a place marked by one of the first military skirmishes that took place as a result of ethnic and political tensions between Serbs and Croats.
From this municipality, near Vukovar, on the border with Serbia, Balsells witnessed the first prisoners of war (F1). The scene, both cruel and painful, depicts a primitive, disorganised but ultimately deadly war. The author describes it as follows:
A small group of civilians stand motionless in the town square. A Serb militiaman forces them into formation. Instead of weapons, these phantasmagoric figures hold brooms and shovels. […] It is devastating to be there, to witness this tragedy and to be unable to do anything. (Balsells, 2002, p.32).
F1. Prisoners of war in Borovo Selo, Croatia (19/07/1991). Photo by Sandra Balsells ©
The impulse to observe, common to both the viewer and the photographer, is perfectly channelled in this photograph. Although it could be classified as a documentary photograph, its most outstanding feature is the attempt to offer a transversal view of the situation, without ignoring the tragic aura that surrounds it.
Morphologically, the vertical lines of the prisoners and their executioner contrast with the horizontality of their shadows and the building behind them. Formally, it is a simple but suggestive picture. On the compositional level, the author frames a scene that is static rather than dynamic, the antithesis of the situation that will be experienced shortly afterwards. The field of representation is reduced, although the appropriate arrangement of the elements that make up the scene is part of the author's intuition in taking the photograph. From the point of view of the enunciative level, we are faced with an image that can be perceived as a personal proposal on the part of its author. This image by Sandra Balsells could seek to identify the viewer with the scene depicted, to move those who are facing death, or more specifically, the drama of the death of someone who has a whole life ahead of them.
As the chapter progresses, we see through the photographs how the conflict becomes terrifying, for as she says, the war in the former Yugoslavia was “a very long and very brutal war”. General shots are interspersed with close-ups, showing that the war has ceased to be something foreign and has become a personal loss. Paul Jenks, her partner at the time, was shot in the back of the head in 1992. The war had just begun.
The psychological consequences of this event threw her into a long depression. Balsells does not hesitate to admit that the consequences of the conflict were harsher than he had ever imagined and that “the price we all paid, especially in the Balkans [...] was very high”.
5.2. Victims and Executioners (Serbia, 1996-1997)
In this second chapter of thirteen photographs, the glances of illusion, of hope, mix with others that are absent, corresponding to a state of pure survival. Despite everything that she has experienced, Balsells' commitment drives her to continue travelling to ground zero of the conflict.
Contextually, the photographs in this section were taken between 1996 and 1997. In 1996, Balsells travelled to Belgrade, where Manuela Nikolic, a young Serbian journalist, welcomed her and showed her the depressing reality that was shaking the country. The weight of defeat (three wars lost in less than four years) is palpable in the despair that pervades the population. The Serbian people began to dream of Milošević's downfall, and many of his opponents took to the streets. Balsells takes an optimistic view of what seems to be a change in the country. What the people do not know is that they will have to wait another four years and lose a fourth war to put an end to the dictator's tyranny.
On a morphological level, in most of the images the visual elements define several planes due to the use of bright lenses and low focal ratios. Balsells shows a tendency to use wide-angle lenses, although in the crowds she often uses telephoto lenses. The lighting, both natural and artificial, is quite soft throughout the chapter. The type of film used is unknown, but we can say that it was black and white, and the grain adds texture and removes sharpness from the image. On a compositional level, many of the images are composed in perspective, as the use of the aforementioned wide angle, along with the diagonal lines that mark many of the scenes, add a great deal of tension to the final results. On the expressive level, the position of the characters, many of whom are smiling, contrasts with the lost, absent gazes, generally of the older population. Balsells masterfully captures the ability of people to adapt to any environment, to live in a hostile, violent place and never lose hope that things will get better.
But this second chapter is not all illusion and hope:
International isolation, economic collapse, the flood of refugees and Milošević's refusal to relinquish power are not Yugoslavia's only problems. Mafia gangs have taken over the country and corruption is rampant [...] For the vast majority, it is hard to survive in these conditions. People manage as best they can, making do with what they have. The most disadvantaged, pensioners and the unemployed, go to soup kitchens to get a plate of hot stew. The humiliation is constant (Balsells, 2002, 70-71).
5.3. Surviving in Silence (Kosovo, 1996)
Nowadays, every armed conflict attracts media attention because of the seriousness and exceptional nature of the events. When Sandra Balsells travelled to Kosovo in 1996, she knew she was in a hotbed. In this southern region of Serbia, the majority Albanian population had fallen victim to the nationalist policies of Slobodan Milošević, who in 1989 had abolished all autonomous political institutions and established a regime that denied the Kosovo Albanian population any access to basic rights.
This third chapter is the shortest of all, with eight photographs. The exteriors are combined with interiors, offering a new image of the population from their homes. There are no close-ups, no detailed shots, but open frames that provide the viewer with a much wider range of information. Given that “every photograph implicitly carries the photographer's intention to communicate something” (Armentia and Caminos, 2003, p.34), in this snapshot (F2) the contextual level corresponds to Sandra Balsells' depiction of the apartheid suffered by the Kosovar Albanian population.
F2. Kosovar Albanian girls at school in Pristina, Kosovo (18/11/1996). Photo by Sandra Balsells ©
On the morphological level, three layers make up the scene. Firstly, the two girls in the front row; secondly, the girl behind them; and in the third plane are the umbrellas, which they must have brought to class. The image is quite sharp, with all the recognisable elements in focus and arranged along a diagonal, indicating that the chosen focal ratio was a high number. In short, this is an image with great expressive power and a careful composition showing the author's ability to take a good snapshot in a complicated environment.
In terms of composition, this is a picture constructed in perspective, which gives the scene great tension. The photograph has more weight on the right, unbalancing the image and creating dynamism and tension in the scene. Finally, from the point of view of the enunciative level, it is a static scene, but one endowed with great narrative power. Susan Sontag said that “for a war, an atrocity, an epidemic, or a so-called natural disaster to become a subject of wider interest, it must reach people through the various systems” (2003, p. 136). Sandra Balsells is at the beginning of this chain, and her images of Dardania, a school in Pristina that segregates Kosovo Albanian and Serb children, are her way of denouncing this injustice.
5.4. The Inevitable War (Kosovo, 1998)
In less than ten years, Kosovo became the fourth Yugoslav war. Although film and literature have led people to “live a fiction with this coverage” (Leguineche, in García-Albi, 2007, p. 151), the reality is very different. Sandra Balsells returns with the conflict already underway. With her camera, she had to know how to move in the most hostile scenarios, exposing her life with the sole aim of giving the public access to truthful, real information from the field. Of the eleven photographs that make up this fourth chapter, the first stands out (F3).
Taken with a Canon T90 and Kodak TMax 100 ASA black and white film, it shows boys who have normalised conflict and violence to the extent that they see war as a game. On the contextual level, it is a snapshot of a group of Kosovar children playing at war in the centre of Pristina, the current capital of Kosovo. On the morphological level, the vertical lines of the young protagonists' figures are among the elements that characterise the photograph taken by Balsells. It is also an image a perspective shot, as the oblique lines converge on the face of the boy who holds the gun to his mouth. The arrangement of the buildings behind them also reinforces this perspective and places the vanishing point in the same place.
At the level of composition, and more specifically in the syntactic system, the image analysed is presented as a photograph with great tension. Moreover, the centre of interest (located in the face of the boy with the gun in his mouth) is displaced from the geometric centre, coinciding with the upper right point where the lines of the rule of thirds converge. On the enunciative level, the photographer offers us, on the one hand, a close-up view of the subjects due to the proximity of the first two and the fact that she has used a wide-angle lens. On the other hand, the perspective composition, with the face of the young man with the gun in the vanishing point, gives the image greater expressiveness. The fact that he is looking directly at the camera does not detract from the documentary style.
F3. Children playing war in Pristina (09/08/1998). Photograph by Sandra Balsells ©
In the presentation of the image, the mise-en-scène stands out, as the camera almost puts us in contact with the characters. The expressiveness of the photography and the gestures and poses of the children are striking. The image offers an unprecedented, or at least original, point of view in the representation of an armed conflict. The other images in this chapter reflect the pain, suffering and despair of those who have lost everything, including their loved ones.
Although the Serbian government does not make it easy and the controls are often insurmountable, the Catalan photographer does not hesitate to practise free and truthful journalism, showing the darkest side of the war. In this way, and line with Barthes' theory (1990, p. 29), the value of her photography is such that many of the images taken by photojournalists have become icons of the conflict.
5.5. The Deportation (Albania, 1999)
In this new issue, Balsells focuses on the drama of Kosovo. A total of nine photographs reflect this. A war that led to the deportation of almost a million Kosovar Albanians (half the population) to Macedonia and Albania, two of the poorest countries in Europe. Housed in makeshift refugee camps set up by the international community in a race against time, the situation was dramatic due to the poor living conditions and the inclement weather of cold and rain.
In a contextual level, this new image (F4) shows a group of Kosovar Albanian refugees in Kukes, a town in northern Albania bordering Kosovo, waiting in line for humanitarian aid as an Albanian policeman tries to maintain order. The photograph was taken with a Canon T90 and Fujichrome slide. The queue is disorderly and chaotic. Almost all the individuals are children and adult men, with some elderly interspersed.
On a morphological level, the image shows an Albanian policeman forcibly organising a group of Kosovar Albanian refugees. Although our gaze is initially directed at the policeman's action, we then analyse the rest of the subjects, most of whom are minors. The focus of interest is therefore dispersed. The composition of the picture, with its perspective, is accentuated by the triangular figure formed by the oblique lines running from the lower corners to the policeman's head.
On a compositional level, the photograph is organised around visual elements that subtly give the image a visual rhythm. The gaze is focused not only on the force used by the policeman to maintain order, but also on the other figures. The image follows the law of thirds, placing the youngest children in the lower third, the policeman's face and other figures in the middle third, and the building and sky in the upper third.
Finally, on the enunciative level, this is a scene charged with naturalness, with realism, which in turn manages to convey the harshness of those who have just lost everything. The faces of desperation, fear and sadness are, in the eyes of the spectator, a shocking and harsh staging. Once again, Sandra Balsells has succeeded in bringing the drama of the armed conflict to those who live far from it.
F4. Kosovar Albanian refugees waiting in line for humanitarian aid in Kukes, Albania (29/04/1999). Photograph Sandra Balsells ©
In the remaining eight photographs that make up the chapter, faces of despair, fear and sadness are still the protagonists, but there is also a glimmer of hope. Close-ups are interspersed with full-length portraits and their new lives as refugees in tents. We also see the Albanian population turning towards the refugees, showing that in a dramatic moment, there is also hope and solidarity.
5.6. The Return (Kosovo, 1999)
Three months after NATO forces began bombing Serbian positions in Kosovo and Serbian territory itself, the Kumanovo Agreement was signed on 9 June 1999 to end the conflict. The return, like the flight, is swift. On a contextual level, this last year of the 20th century will show how the effects of the war have dampened the initial joy of the Kosovo Albanian population. The roles are reversed and yesterday's victors are today's persecutors. In 12 photographs, Sandra Balsells captures a new episode of hatred and revenge in which events like the one described below are commonplace:
Dozens of Albanian children have climbed to the top of the temple. They look like hungry termites, ready to devour anything. Armed with sticks and iron bars, they beat violently at the mosaics that decorate the entrance. [...]. They throw everything into the void, at the feet of an ecstatic mass that never stops clapping and whistling. Many parents encourage them (Balsells, 2002, p. 168).
On a morphological level, there is a mixture of long shots and close-ups. The predominance of oblique lines that direct the eye towards the vanishing point, used to construct images with perspective, is palpable. In terms of composition, the visual field is very rich in terms of the number of elements and information it contains. This representation shows very well the environment in which the action takes place. Most of the photographs are natural, but there are also some posed portraits. Both are constructed with a fantastic composition.
On an enunciative level, the photographs convey a great deal of information, as the end of the war does not put an end to the tragedy. In addition to the devastated environment, there is a huge carpet of mines and unexploded bombs hidden in the ground. The dead number in the hundreds and the pain and drama are still present in the daily lives of a war-torn population.
5. 7. The End of the Milošević Era (Serbia, 2000)
The epilogue of Balkan in memoriam corresponds to the fall of Slobodan Milošević's regime. Eleven photographs testify to this. After thirteen years in power, the Serbian president had to acknowledge the triumph of the opposition.
On the contextual level, this last chapter begins with the curious scene which, under the slogan of the uprising that we can read on the wall, 'Gotov je!!'[5], shows a pig's head with its throat slit between burnt-out cars and smouldering containers (F5). On the morphological level, it should be noted that this is an image that perfectly represents popular disgust, but it also shows that its author is a well-informed person, with “a curious mind, a broad general knowledge, and a special intuition about the issues that interest readers at any given moment” (Keene, 1995, p. 10). The lines, mainly vertical and diagonal, are reinforced by the pig's head, which serves as a focal point. In addition, there are three planes in the photograph: the car with the pig's head, the car on the right and the building in the background.
F5. Ruins of the Belgrade Parliament, Serbia (09/10/2000). Photograph by Sandra Balsells ©
From a compositional point of view, and even though the main element is not in the centre of the composition but slightly to the left, the structuring of the scene gives the image great visual balance. On the enunciative level, the general shot is undoubtedly the author's intention to show, in all its dimensions, the consequences of the popular mobilisations that began with the massive demonstration that took place in the city of Belgrade on 5 October 2000.
In later images, through open and general shots, we see the Serbian population taking over the Parliament, a symbol of Milošević's power, and Radio Serbian Television, the nerve centre of the Serbian regime's media manipulation. But Milošević is not falling alone. He is taking down whole generations who have been marked by more than a decade of horror, fear and death.
6. Conclusions
From a gender perspective, we can see that the prevailing idea that making and seeing war is a male thing has made it difficult for women to witness it, so it is not surprising that photojournalism has been and still is a profession with a greater number of men in its ranks, as can be seen in the specialised literature. In one way or another, there is a link between the exclusion suffered by these professionals and the uniform and androcentric discourse that exalts the male photographer as the main observer in an armed conflict. Thus, as in other fields, gender equality in photojournalism remains a utopia. A situation that can begin to be reversed if we have references, and for this it is essential to reveal, value and make visible the work that many women have developed with great talent in this field of photography, as we have done in this article.
From a photojournalistic point of view, this work dedicated to the figure of the Catalan photojournalist Sandra Balsells has allowed us to testify that she is technically a creator with a work of unquestionable aesthetic value; and ethically, we are in front of a work full of respect, dignity and coherence, attributes that we can associate with the photographer herself. Through a humble and honest gaze, Balsells has managed to portray not only a conflict but its entire evolution.
Balkan in Memoriam is a work of great documentary value, in which we witness a war and its aftermath. The horror of fear and denunciation. Of the wounds inflicted and the difficulty of healing them. The multiple framing, the use of perspective and the personal commitment that led Balsells to follow the evolution of these people with her camera show that she aimed to photograph in order to make society ask itself more questions, to seek justice, to awaken an occasionally absent conscience, to seek responsibility wherever it exists, even in herself.
The Catalan photojournalist has been able to show the causes, motives and consequences of an armed conflict on the population, making a difference to those who only focus on the history of the war. Her photographs are evidence of the long process of a confrontation of this magnitude and its evolution until the post-war period begins and death is exchanged for hope, violence for illusion, and destruction for reconstruction.
Moreover, by generously sharing her experiences and memories with the authors of this text, she has endowed it with unquestionable value, making it possible to create a unique testimony of her life and career as a photojournalist on the battle fronts, providing unpublished material to be studied, shared and loaded with references for future generations.
Through her work, Sandra Balsells has left a historical legacy of enormous capacity to develop the craft of photojournalism. Without her, without her work, without her courage, without that special gaze that characterises her, the reality that has taken place in the Balkans would be incomplete. Balkan in Memoriam has created an important graphic legacy and, as a historical legacy, allows us to come closer to an event that marked a whole generation of survivors from the countries that made up the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is not just a book of photographs, but the result of a personal commitment to the causes that Sandra Balsells has sought to portray with her camera.
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[1] Words are taken from the interview conducted with Sandra Balsells on 28 April 2021 via videoconference using the Meet application. Most of the testimonies collected in this article come from this interview, conducted by the co-author of this article, María Peralta Barrios, but also from subsequent conversations with her.
[2] Now known as London College of Communication.
[3] In 1994, she co-authored the documentary Dying for the Truth for the British Channel 4, which investigated the true causes of Paul Jenks' death.
[4] We mention modern photojournalism because if we look back in time, another woman's name will be the protagonist: Sabina Muchart. After tedious research by the collector Juan Antonio Fernández Rivero, the identity of the woman who is now considered the first female war photojournalist in Spain and the world was rediscovered (García, 2005, p. 54). S. Muchart's signature was associated for decades with a male figure, but once her identity was discovered, numerous documents were found that have allowed her birth and death dates to be established with precision, as well as the activity she carried out as a photographer. Born in Olot and settled in Málaga, the Catalan photographer did not hesitate to cross the two hundred and seven kilometres of sea that separate the peninsula from Melilla to photograph some of the soldiers present in the Rif War (1893-1894).
[5] It's over!!
