I spent a few hours waiting for the sun while photographing
this pendulous ruin on Sarajevo’s once deadly Sniper’s Alley
in 2002. I noticed a steady trickle of other western Europeans – charity
workers, UN relief functionaries, SFOR soldiers, embassy staff – armed,
like me, with cameras of their own. The attention seemed to have prompted
the city authorities to designate the structure as a protected national
monument. I learned that it had become a listed building, despite its questionable
status as a standing structure. Camera lenses cut the space of shelled and
ruined Sarajevo into zones of heritage and preservation and, by implication,
zones of potential redevelopment. This building is no longer standing. It
has been torn down to make way for industrial parks, Coca-Cola factories
and the global heritage of a thriving consumer culture.
Shelled offices of Bosnian daily newspaper, Oslobodenje (Serbo-Croat
for liberty), Snipers Alley, Sarajevo, Bosnia, June 2002