Evidence: The Case Against Milosevic FROM THE PUBLISHER
Evidence addresses the issue of crime and justice in war. It challenges us to view this particular crime as a rational, considered and planned process rather than as a series of random events. It dispels the argument that crimes were not committed in Kosovo.
Evidence was photographed during the conflict in Kosovo between the NATO backed KLA and the Yugoslav armed forces during the spring and early summer of 1999. The photographs were taken in Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo.
It was apparent, from eyewitness testimony in Albania and Macedonia, that
there were charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity to be made
against elements of the Yugoslav political and military establishment. When
the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) published the
�Indictment of Milosevic ET AL� during the conflict, photographer Gary
Knight decided to use it as the central narrative for this story. Knight
states, �I approached the story as a curator of a crime, rather than as a
journalist, photographing mass graves and scenes of crime and interpreting
the charges of murder, persecution, and deportation. I believe the
universal language of photography renders the concept of war crimes less
alien to those for whom the idea is normally abstract.�
Though the title may suggest a literal presentation of matters related to the current court proceedings in the Hague, in reality Evidence is purer and broader in its approach to documenting the events in Kosovo. It does not set out to be the definitive record of crimes committed in the province. Rather, it tests the meaning of OEevidence� in its most fundamental sense, forcing viewers to test their belief or disbelief in the face of images of what happened to the people of Kosovar, both the living and the dead.
About the Author
Gary Knight
Born in England in 1964, Knight began working as a photographer in the late 1980�s in South East Asia and Indochina where he embarked on a portrayal of the internecine warfare in a region coming to terms with the end of the Cold War.
In January 1993, he moved to the former Yugoslavia where he became involved in documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity, which remain the core theme of his work to this day.
Knight�s work has been widely published by magazines all over the world and he has contributed work to several books. He occasionally lectures and is the author of several essays on journalism and photography. He is a founding member of VII Photo Agency created in September 2001 and the agency�s first President (2001-2) and Chairman of the Board (2001-2)
Knight is the recipient of The Amnesty International Award for Photojournalism 2001-2002 for Evidence. He is a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine and a trustee of the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation. Knight is currently working on a book about Kashmir with writer Muzamil Jaleel.
Anthony Loyd
Loyd was born in 1966 in England. He served as a platoon commander on operations in Northern Ireland and the Persian Gulf before going to live in Bosnia. Later employed as a special correspondent for The Times, Loyd has subsequently covered eight other wars in places as diverse as Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo. He is the author of My War Gone By, I Miss It So.� He is the 2001 recipient of the British National Press Award for The War Correspondent of the Year.
FROM THE CRITICS
Suzy Hansen - Salon.com
Gary Knight and Anthony Loyd's new book, "Evidence," is about 15 inches long and five inches wide, covered in black cloth and held together by two large screws. It's hard to figure out what it is ... an art book, maybe? So it's grimly surprising after a while to realize that "Evidence" is a harrowing collection of photographs, usually one per white page, of the crimes committed by Slobodan Milosevic. "Evidence" is effective in its simplicity. No words interrupt the succession of images-pictures of brutally mutilated bodies, of blood sprayed on walls, of surreal scenes such as one in which a white horse stands inside a house of rubble. While it's not something you'd casually leave lying around on your living room coffee table, it seems that the authors want you to, as if to say that the daily horrors of Yugoslavia shouldn't be sequestered away in a criminal court, but instead exhibited for all of humanity, in unflinching detail.
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