The journalist who turned war into a historical document

For years, I was convinced that Jozo Pavković had pushed aside his artistic gift as a photojournalist. I was wrong. When I opened his photomonograph “1,860 Days,” I was left speechless by a photographic archive that is genuinely rare.

The book weighs almost six kilograms. Its size, ambition and sheer volume of material demand more than a casual reading on the sofa. It must be placed on a table and turned slowly, page by page. Across 1,184 pages, Pavković presents several thousand photographs, most of them taken during the war, including many that deserve a place in any photographic anthology.

The author of the piece remembers Pavković from his years as a photojournalist, before his long editorial and management career at Večernji list. Pavković taught younger reporters the basics of framing and exposure, and explained techniques such as the low-angle view and the fisheye lens. That knowledge, learned in the middle of wartime reporting, stayed with them.

Their professional paths often crossed even though they worked for competing newspapers. While Pavković built Večernji list’s bureau in Široki Brijeg, the writer worked first for Slobodna Dalmacija and later for Jutarnji list. Their rivalry remained friendly. Pavković would still lend him photographs, sending them through a telephoto machine, a slow and noisy process that transferred images over an often unreliable telephone connection to the Zagreb newsroom.

“1,860 Days” traces the breakup of Yugoslavia, the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the creation of Herceg-Bosna, the establishment of the Croatian Defence Council, the Croat-Bosniak conflict, the renewed alliance, the Washington Agreement, the final military operations and Dayton. Photographs appear alongside old newspaper front pages, the banknotes of a disappearing state, ballots, political documents and maps. Pavković’s images are rarely theatrical. His soldiers are tired and muddy, sitting, smoking and waiting. Some of the strongest photographs do not show death at all, but life continuing around it.