Months after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Matteo Bastianelli spent three weeks documenting camps for migrants in Bulgaria. On the last day, in a military-base-turned camp, he met a 20-year-old named Mohamad Al Masalmeh.
Matteo Bastianelli moved to Sarajevo, the capital, in 2009, drawn to stories he had heard on previous visits. He spent the next four years working on “The Bosnian Identity,” a dark project that explores the hidden emotional wounds left by the 1992-95 war that changed the country. He sought to ask what it meant to move on after enduring such ravaging violence.
Bosnia stays blocked in transition, still trapped between past and future with the missing parts of the Bosnian identity puzzle lost or, only missing, among the ashes of the former Jugoslavia.
The exteriors of the houses and apartment blocks display a multitude of open wounds. The holes made by machine-gun fire and the white blotches of concrete, used to fill up the gaping cavities created by the bombs, look like imaginary constellations scattered across the whole of Bosnia.
I am a 26 free-lance photographer, filmmaker and journalist based between Rome and Sarajevo. In 2007 I started working on long-term documentary projects, focusing mainly on social issues and post war consequences in the Balkans.
