Atrocity, Memory, Photography: Imaging the Concentration Camps of Bosnia -- The Case of ITN versus Living Marxism

Among the many images of atrocity that emerged from the Bosnian War, the picture of Fikret Alic and others imprisoned at the Trnopolje camp in the Prijedor region stands out. Taken from a 1992 British television report that detailed the role of camps such as Omarska and Trnopolje in the ethnic cleansing strategy of the Bosnian Serb authorities, the image of Alic became the focal point of a controversy about how the Bosnian camps were represented, and the political impact and purpose of those representations. Resulting in a legal clash between Independent Television News (ITN) and Living Marxism (LM) magazine, this controversy is the subject of a two-part article, the full text of which can be seen here.

In Atrocity, Memory, Photography (part 1), the allegations concerning the filming of the Trnopolje inmates are considered in detail. In Atrocity, Memory, Photography (part 2) the argument moves beyond the specifics of the case and the camp to an exploration of the historical, political and visual context in which those specificities are located. This involves understanding the significance of the camps in terms of the Bosnian War and the history of the concentration camps, as well as discussing the issue of photography and the Holocaust to question how particular atrocities are represented. The articles conclude with the issue of intellectual responsibility and the politics of critique in cases such as these.

In April 2012 John Simpson of the BBC publicly expressed regret for being a defence witness in the ITN vs Living Marxism libel trial:

Reviewing Vulliamy's new book about the Bosnian war, The War is Dead, Long Live the War – Bosnia: the Reckoning, Simpson says that what happened at Trnopolje, as well as at the Omarska camp and during the siege of Sarajevo, was "evil". He adds: "Vulliamy's account of what happened in the camp is completely unanswerable; and I'm sorry now that I supported the small post-Marxist magazine Living Marxism when it was sued by ITN for questioning its reporting of the camps. It seemed to me at the time that big, well-funded organisations should not put small magazines out of business; but it's clear that there were much bigger questions involved."