Amidst darkness, something shines — and illuminates for ever
The history behind the photo made by the famous The New York Times photographer Andrew Testa, tells a story of a boy who grew up — and a nation that followed suit. A photo-album…
This is a famous photo from the Kosovo war. And I’ll tell you the incredible story about it.
The photo shows the mass of people, mostly women, waiting for bread in a squalid refugee camp in the northern town of Kukës in 1999.
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There’s a boy there too, barely noticeable, rather helpless looking, stuck in the middle, waiting for his share of bread. We’ll come back to the boy.
You probably know the context: Serbia instituted an apartheid regime in Kosovo for much of 1990s and after Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK) started the clandestine resistance, mostly in the rural country side, Milosevic’s units started a vicious campaign of scorched earth, committing numerous massacres against civilians and used this opportunity to dramatically accelerate his efforts to “cleanse” Kosovo of its 1.8 million ethnic Albanians. Almost 650,000 refugees had to leave Kosovo only for Albania and many others were stranded in Macedonia and Montenegro.
At the height of the Kosovo War, refugees were crossing the border into Albania at the rate of 4,000 people per hour. UN said it was the “worst humanitarian crisis in Europe the second world war”.
The photo was taken by Andrew Testa, one of the world’s best war photographers. I worked with Andrew half a decade later, back in 2005, when we were setting up a daily newspaper in Kosovo called Express. I was one of the founders and the CEO of this fledgling newspaper but Andrew became our editor of photography. He trained a generation of Kosovar young photographers who all later became famous photographers in their own right.
But I digress…
What about the boy in the first picture? Did he survive? Where is he now?
Well, that boy had a talent for drawing. There was a visiting Italian psychologist to the Kukës 2 refugee camp. Giacomo “Angelo” Poli noticed the boy, who came from the destroyed village of Runik in Drenica valley, and helped him with continuing his interest in arts.
A quarter of a century later, Petrit Halilaj, the boy from the picture, became the first ever artist from Balkans with a solo show in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York. He’s one of the most important contemporary artists in this part of the world. New York Times and global media covered his show extensively.
Petrit’s drawings from the refugee camp became basis for his exhibition in Tate Gallery:
And most recently, Petrit established a foundation named HAJDE, that is currently focusing on renovating the old Culture house in his native village of Runik.
Out of the darkness of 1999, an artist was born. A nation was born too, now celebrating 25 years of freedom and 17 years of independence.
Happy Kosovar Independence Day folks.
