The Tragedy of Dying Unknown

[In Mostar] in September 1993, I met a very old man who was living under circumstances that you couldn’t ever imagine. All around, people were dying like animals, and this old man came up to me because he saw I had a camera. He said to me, “We can accept to die like animals. We can accept to be killed like a rabbit or to face somebody we don’t understand and who doesn’t care about our lives. But to die like this, unknown and without any proof of our existence—that’s the worst thing possible.” This old man was living in a situation where life has more clarity, where everything is reduced to the essentials. He was speaking about the future. He didn’t want a witness for his own life and death. He was saying that if this is never known, it will be repeated in the future. And that means that it will never change; it will be like this forever.

Laurent Van der Stockt: Born in Belgium in 1964 Van der Stockt’s first job in photography was with the agency Isopress. In 1989 he paid his own way to Romania, and, posing as a tourist, photographed life under the Ceausescu regime. He returned in 1990 to photograph its collapse and has been working in combat zones ever since. He has been wounded twice, and is presently recovering in Paris from wounds sustained in Ramallah.