Revealing post-war landscape aesthetics with Armin Graca

Beyond traditional photojournalism to understand Bosnia and Herzegovina’s post-war landscape

Images that circulate widely on social media play a decisive role in shaping how social and political realities are produced, perceived, and contested. Far from being neutral, these images contribute to the formation of cultural and territorial identities, reinforcing dominant narratives while also holding the potential to disrupt, reframe, and resist them.

Within this context, Der Greif “Local Voices” continues to foreground situated perspectives and collaborative authorship as a way of slowing down image circulation and re-embedding images within their social, cultural, and political conditions. Through an ongoing exercise in co-writing, the project examines how visual practices can counter homogenizing narratives and support more plural, democratic forms of representation by insisting on specificity, locality, and dialogue, foregrounding situated knowledge over dominant or centralized narratives.

In this conversation with Armin Graca, we’ve explored the "unjust peace" of post-war Bosnia, navigating the invisible but deeply felt boundaries that have shaped his life and work. Centering on his long-term project, “Points of Impasse,” Graca discusses how he utilizes archival research and physical interventions, like sewing directly into his prints, to visualize the "inner entity boundary line" that partitions the landscape. He moves beyond traditional photojournalism to capture a condition of persistence, where unresolved history lingers in uneven infrastructure and seasonal psychological tensions. The dialogue reveals a practice built on the friction between lived experience and historical record, ultimately framing photography not just as a tool for documentation, but as a vital, material means of processing the fragmented reality of the Balkans.

Armin Graca is a photographer from Sarajevo and currently based in Belgrade. His practice centers on street and documentary photography, exploring everyday social life, post-war realities, and the nuances of identity and memory. Working through long-term visual narratives, he combines observational street work with research-driven documentary approaches to examine how political structures, historical trauma, and lived experience intersect in shaping division, transition, and collective identity across the region.

Ilaria Sponda: Your ongoing project “Points of Impasse” started in 2019 seems to play a fundamental role in your practice, tracing the impact of the Bosnian war. How do the dividing line still marking separation merges from your research and images?

Armin Graca: I often refer to “Points of Impasse” as my life project. Growing up near the inner entity boundary line, I was repeatedly warned as a child never to cross to the other side. That early prohibition shaped a deep curiosity in me long before I understood its political weight. When I finally began the work, visiting these once-forbidden places triggered a surprising, inherited anxiety; even though I was in my own city, the psychological barrier remained. This project taught me the limits of photography alone. I realized that the strongest images emerge from the tension between lived experience and rigorous research allowing the work to move beyond personal exploration and reveal the broader structures that continue to shape these spaces.

IS: Your work incorporates a significant amount of archival material alongside your own photography. How do you navigate these archives, and what are you searching for within them?

AG: I spend a great deal of time on fieldwork and archival research. In Sarajevo, most institutions were quite open, though the process always involves some navigation. For me, the archive functions as a way of thinking through the present; it reveals the underlying mechanisms of what I encounter in the field. A pivotal moment for me was discovering a 1996 minefield map. I saw that the distribution of mines closely mirrored today’s inner entity boundary line. While I intellectually understood the line followed by the former front lines, I didn't truly visualize the connection until I saw that map. It directly reshaped my approach to the landscape, leading me to produce images like the one featuring a victim’s prosthetic leg. In my view, the archive doesn't just sit behind the images but rather extends them. The project actually began in 2018 with an image of a "half-repaired road", a common scene in Bosnia and Herzegovina where one side is paved and the other is not due to jurisdictional divides. Initially, I wanted to capture a broad image of the country, but in 2019, I realized the power of narrowing my focus. I decided to travel exclusively along the line itself. By focusing on this specific, invisible boundary, I found I could more effectively explain the broader political complexities of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

IS: How do you reckon the passing of time changes these manifestations of difference?

AG: The land itself has changed, and I have grown alongside it. Over the years, I struggled with uncertainty and self-doubt, often feeling the pressure of not doing enough. But as time passed, I realized that the landscape and my relationship to it wasn't static. Eventually, I decided to “go with the flow” and express that reality through physical interventions. I began sewing directly into the photographs to mark the lines I encountered, combining these stitched interventions with archival material. This process allowed me to move past my initial hesitation and find a more authentic way to depict a landscape that is constantly shifting under the weight of its own history.

IS: Looking at the contemporary state of the country, how does the "post-war" reality manifest itself today? Does it feel like something that is evolving, or is it a history that refuses to be restituted?

AG: I don’t believe the present is ever fully detached from the past. Instead of a clear break between "then" and "now," time feels layered, with unresolved history deeply embedded in the present. There is a phrase I often hear in Bosnia that summarizes this perfectly: "The only thing worse than a war is an unjust peace." That captures our current situation. The present isn't just defined by the absence of conflict, but by the weight of unresolved outcomes. It is a condition of persistence where the effects of the war remain active even when life appears normal. It’s always there, lingering beneath the surface.

IS: That seems to be the very definition of "contemporary": an unclear middle ground where the past and future are constantly bleeding into one another: an "in-between" state where the logic of the past still structures every decision and compromise made today. When you look at how Bosnia is depicted in mainstream media and journalism, do you feel your work offers a counter-narrative? Are you intentionally pushing back against the common circulation of images, or are you trying to visualize that "in-between" world that often goes unseen?

AG: In Bosnia, there are always two or three sides to history. It’s a difficult landscape to navigate; for instance, our education system often teaches two entirely different historical narratives depending on where you are. My approach is intentionally different from the mainstream media or the typical imagery you find in newspapers. I am interested in questioning 'the line' itself, a concept people aren’t used to scrutinizing because, while it exists, it has become largely invisible. People are aware of it, yet not aware at the same time. While the psychological barrier was immense when I was growing up, crossing to the other side was a rare and significant event, today, the shifts are mostly driven by economics. You see people crossing over to buy apartments where they are cheaper, or visiting the street markets originally established by European forces after the war. These markets were placed directly on the center of these lines so both sides could interact and trade. For most people now, these practical, economic factors are the main drivers of movement across a line that otherwise remains a silent, unresolved presence in their lives.

IS: In your work, the personal and the political seem to mingle deeply. Your project “Traces of Lineage” appears to be a very intimate exploration of family. How did that project bridge the gap between your own history and the medium of photography?

Armin Graca: “Traces of Lineage” was born out of a desire to know my grandfather, whom I never met. I only knew him through the stories my father told. My father has this incredible archive of photos from his parents, and I began digging through them. The project itself became a ritual. Every morning, my father has his own routine: coffee and cigarettes. I started breaking that ritual by coming in with my questions and these old photographs. My father is a naturally quiet person; we can go days without speaking a word. But the act of sitting down and physically touching these pictures together, reviving them in our shared space, opened him up. It was a way for me to get him to speak, to connect the stories of his father to our present.

IS: It’s powerful how the materiality of the work: the act of touching and even your practice of sewing becomes a catalyst for that dialogue.

AG: Exactly. It’s about more than just the image; it’s about the physical presence of the past. Using those archival photos and putting that materiality together was a way to force a conversation that might not have happened otherwise. It was a way to see a side of my father I hadn't seen: to hear him speak so much about where we come from.

IS: You’re currently based in Belgrade. How has moving to Serbia influenced your work? Are you integrating your ongoing research in Bosnia with new observations from your current environment?

AG: Since moving to Serbia nearly three years ago, my practice has developed along two parallel approaches. I continue returning to Bosnia for structured, research-based work, while in Serbia I photograph more intuitively and responsively. As a Bosnian living in a neighboring country that feels both familiar and historically entangled, yet culturally distinct, I occupy a position of proximity and distance at the same time. Here, photography functions as a form of visual exploration. I use the camera to enter spaces, attend events, and observe everyday life, gradually understanding the culture through presence rather than predefined research. The process is less about documenting a thesis and more about learning through movement and encounter.

IS: Finally, I’d like to touch on this "post-war aesthetic." How do you define it? Is it something born from the mix of archival analysis and new imagery, or is it a way of seeing the country that moves away from mainstream tropes?

AG: I see the post-war aesthetic as something inherently fragmented and unstable. It manifests in partial repairs, uneven infrastructure, and spaces shaped by invisible boundaries. Even when physical violence is no longer visible, its logic remains embedded in the landscape, our collective memory, and our everyday routines. This instability is reinforced by recurring political tensions. In Bosnia, these moments of escalation return cyclically. For example, almost every spring, perhaps due to a collective PTSD, there is a public conversation that a new war is about to start. Politicians often exploit this, triggering those anxieties specifically in the springtime. These moments rarely, if ever, lapse back into actual conflict, but they sustain a constant sense of uncertainty. To me, that uncertainty is the core of the post-war aesthetic. It’s not just about what you see; it’s about the feeling that the ground beneath you isn't entirely solid.