It is with deep sadness that we received the news of the untimely death of Paul Lowe, one of the giants of photojournalism.
Our own work on the visualization of peace and the aftermath of violence cannot be separated from our participation in two conferences Paul organized in Sarajevo, Why Remember: Memory and Forgetting in Times of War and Its Aftermath, 2018 and 2019. Paul’s photographic work during and after the siege of Sarajevo heavily influenced our thinking about photography.
In our most recent book Peace, Complexity, Visuality: Ambiguities in Peace and Conflict, there are numerous references to Paul’s work not only as a photographer but also as a person who always thought innovatively about the possibilities and limits of representation, the forensic and material aspects of images (the ‘thingness’ of the photograph) and the enduring power of photojournalism to show us things we would otherwise not see.
His insistence on political responses to images and his frustration when such responses failed to materialize helped us understand the political relevance of image making and image dissemination. His cultural and academic activities in Sarajevo after the siege and his insistence on remembering shaped to a very large extent our own understanding of aftermath photography: the need to remember and the need to move on.
King’s College London, where Paul was a visiting professor in war studies, describes him as a “friend, colleague and collaborator whose work had a huge impact in shining a spotlight on the siege of Sarajevo and addressing its legacy. … His boundless energy, warmth, creativity, initiative and enthusiasm were contagious and uniquely inspiring” and certainly inspired us.
Thanks, Paul.