FROM THE ARCHIVE: Vukovar

I went twice to Vukovar shooting a documentary project to mark the 10th anniversary of the war there.  A Croatian town near the border with Serbia, it suffered terribly during a three-month siege in 1991 that left 3000 dead and 15,000 homes destroyed.

It's a project, and an experience, that has stayed with me in the ten years since I shot it. I went there to offer an alternative to the drama of photojournalism. To re-visit a community that had experienced extreme crisis and to photograph it in a quiet and considered way.

The images were never published. I remember that the Independent Magazine and BBC Television, amongst others, were ready to run the series to mark the 10th anniversary, and then on September 11th 2001 some planes flew in to the Twin Towers in New York and everything changed. The Balkans were no longer news. There was new drama unfolding elsewhere. 

That, in fact, was precisely the point.

So the images stay hidden and unspeaking in sheets of negative holders, contact prints and scanned files and all the work and thought that went in to producing them remains somehow unsatisfied.

Here is one image from the series that has always intrigued me. I'm not sure if it talks of history or secrets or psychology or horror. Perhaps that is it's strength. It evokes feelings that are hard to define.