Jens Olof Lasthein: Moments in Between: Pictures From Former Yugoslavia

First edition, first printing. Hardcover. Black paper-covered boards with title stamped in white on cover and spine; with photographically illustrated dust jacket. Photographs and text (in Englis and Swedish) by Jens Olof Lasthein. Text (in English and Swedish) by Jesper Lindau. Includes a list of plates with thumbnail illustrations. Designed by Patric Leo. Unpaginated (144 pp.), with 55 full-bleed, four-color plates. 8 x 10 inches. [Cited in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, Volume II. (London and New York: Phaidon, 2006).] From Parr and Badger: "Moments in Between is an impressive example of the new, artistically aware photojournalism. It deals with the murderous break-up of Yugoslavia following the erosion of the communist bloc...Lasthein, typically, does not look at these vicious conflicts directly, but like a nineteenth-century photographer he documents the landscape of war rather than the war itself. In a series of luscious, even lyrical landscapes taken in Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia, he documents an urban topography and a social landscape blighted by war -- scarred buildings, wrecked cars, piles of rubble; yet on the streets daily life continues as routinely as possible -- women shop, children play, men work. This is the reality of a war zone: long, uneasy moments of no fighting, menaced by the continual threat of further violence. Thus Lasthein deals with the poetry rather than the hyperbole of war. He is concerned 'with daily life in the shadow of a war. Between shellings, after ethnic cleansing, or before a shot is fired.'"