Exhibition 'Mrtvare' by photojournalist Armin Durgut

(Patria) - An exhibition of photographs of footwear found in mass graves and on the Death March in eastern Bosnia after the genocide against local Muslims during the war in the nineties will be opened from July 1st at the Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. Footwear scattered across individual and mass graves after the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, repaired and altered multiple times before their owners met tragic fates, inspired young photographer Armin Durgut to point to the lack of empathy for thousands of people in the heart of Europe through these garments.

The photographer is particularly struck by the footwear that people in the Srebrenica enclave received as humanitarian aid through UNHCR, and which they believed was used in the West to bury the deceased, thus calling it by the ominous name – mrtvare! (dead ones!), which is also the name of this creative exhibition.

Speaking about the exhibition 'Mrtvare', British photographer Paul Lowe said that Durgut treats the found shoes with care and intention, as if they were artifacts of a lost civilization in a museum collection.

'With the attention paid to these personal items, the author testifies to their owners, creating a devastatingly powerful, yet deeply subtle cry of suffering and pain,' Lowe wrote.

By managing to capture authentic scenes of human tragedy, Durgut's diverse photographic work has been recognized beyond the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region formed by the breakup of former Yugoslavia, and his works have been published and awarded by domestic and international media.

The 'Mrtvare' project, which will also be presented in book form, was supported and fully financed by the Srebrenica Memorial Center.