Between Fears and Hope

Published September 2024

Hemeria, 2024 272 pages | $67

Between Fears and Hope, a photo book by Fabrice Dekoninck, opens with an epigraph that takes us backwards in time. Dekoninck quotes from the first canto of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, words that encapsulate the Italian poet’s fear and vulnerability:

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Dante then proceeds through the dark terrain of hell, his rich allegory a commentary on morality, human behavior, and society. 

With that opening, Dekoninck molds his own framework for guiding his readers through another kind of hell: by showing the ongoing impact of the Bosnian War. Dekoninck’s commentaries are manifold, focusing on injustice, trauma, and, at times, cautious hope for the future. Ultimately, Between Fears and Hope serves to better our understanding of a painful history, one defined by still festering wounds.

“I am a photographer of memory, a collector of what used to be and of what will disappear. I explore traces of the traumas of my contemporaries.” This is how Dekoninck introduces himself in the book, which opens with essays before proceeding to the main breadth of imagery.

For background, Dekoninck describes a disillusionment during the first months of the conflict in Bosnia: “By not naming the attacker, the international community did nothing else but deny the humanity of the Bosnians, especially the Muslim Bosniaks….it encouraged the attacker to pursue its criminal intentions.” In short, a refusal, as Dekoninck says, of the truth. From there, he names the perpetrator: “the ominous project of ‘Greater Serbia’: a nationalist doctrine promoted by Belgradian ideologists and fed on the devouring ambition of a power-hungry politician, Slobodan Milošević.”

This opening essay gives historical context, describes Dekoninck’s role as an outsider to Bosnia, and lays out why he has conducted this work, which is, in part, to fight a culture of silence that has dominated in areas, particularly the Serb-majority state of Republika Srpska. Accordingly, Between Fears and Hope tackles injustice, genocide, denial, and how the past seeps forward through generations. 

Before we encounter Dekoninck’s photographs, we read words by Philippe Simon, a correspondent for France Inter-radio in 1993. His essay includes a petrifying excerpt, apparently from the draft of a column he wrote in November of that year. Describing a schoolroom scene where a teacher and her students were finishing class as a mortar shell landed just outside, the write-up ends with gruesome details of death. The chilling final words simply state: “The class was over.”

So begins our journey through a modern-day hell. Where Dante gave us visually vivid text, Dekoninck offers actual imagery. Organized by sections, corresponding to cities around Bosnia (Srebrenica, Prijedor, Sarajevo), the reader encounters a spectrum of photographs, ranging from grainy black and white scenescapes, to detail shots, to desaturated color visuals that present an otherworldly place long since uninhabited. When we do see people, they are anything but otherworldly—that is the point. The traumatic legacy exists ingrained in society and impacts a current population in ways that are, at times, nearly imperceptible. But what seems a pedestrian moment becomes much more. As Dekoninck says, “Photography is my way of questioning the world”. In turn, he prods his reader to push deeper into a history that carries into the present.

The images themselves are not heavy-handed, which contributes to Dekoninck’s emphasis on the everyday quality of this festering history. Moreover, the layout provides a rhythm, alternating text and imagery, single page photos and full two-page spreads. Of particular note are the many portraits throughout, each accompanied by the individual’s story. For instance, Almasa, whose 17-year-old brother Abdulah was handed over to Serb forces by Dutch peacekeeping soldiers. His body was later found in a mass grave. 

In the end, this book stands as a call to action toward remembering the past, and for establishing justice. We are told that thousands of war criminals have gone unpunished for their crimes during the Bosnian War. But Dekoninck knows that courtroom justice is unlikely for those thousands and is not the only form of justice for society. He posits the idea of a protected collective historical memory such that partisan biases cannot occlude the factual realities of crimes committed. This, he conjectures, may be a way of moving toward a space of greater reconciliation in a region still rife with civil, religious, and cultural animosity.

This haunting book will leave its reader uncomfortable—in a most productive way, demanding that we confront the legacy of war and injustice.

—Lauren Walsh