I'm not a professional photographer, nor do I intend to be. But I do love capturing the beauty of a moment in a single image. The juxtapositions, the beauty and the tragedy of a time.
I spent around 2 weeks in Bosnia and Herzegovina (in the midst of a 5 month trip through Europe) in 2011, I was 19 and I still consider it the most profound time of my life. Bosnia is a beautiful country, filled with beautiful people but it has a recent, bloody history.
Not long after the winter olympics were held in Sarajevo, the country was at war. After such a point of pride and celebration, the nation descended into chaos. I never got to speak to my grandfather about his time in the war, he died when I was too young to understand, but seeing the look in the Bosnian people's eyes as they spoke of such a horrible event, so near to the present, was incredibly moving.
And so, the sites of olympics, abandoned, forgotten about, now remain in and around the city. I find the graffiti on the bobsled tracks to be a fantastic metaphor for the country's history. High hopes and joy, turned to destruction. And yet the end result is beautiful. These people are incredibly warm and hopeful. Determined that nothing like this will happen again.