STANDING TO REMEMBER: Sarajevo 1994–1996

STANDING TO REMEMBER: Sarajevo 1994–1996
Mohsen Rastani (Iran)
Exhibition
June 4–17, 2026
Sarajevo Memorial Center, Kovači
Opening: June 4, 2026, 19:00
Curated by Lejla Hodžić

As part of the cooperation between the Ministry for Veterans’ Affairs of Canton Sarajevo, the University of Sarajevo, and the WARM Festival, an exhibition by Mohsen Rastani, one of Iran’s most important documentary photographers, will be presented at the Sarajevo Memorial Center from June 4 to 17, 2026. The exhibition is curated by Lejla Hodžić.

The exhibition will open on Thursday, June 4, 2026, at 7:00 PM at the Sarajevo Memorial Center (Širokac 1, Kovači, Sarajevo), in the presence of the artist.

Mohsen Rastani (1958) is an Iranian documentary photographer of the post-revolutionary generation. He graduated in photography from the University of Tehran. Throughout his career, he has documented social and humanitarian issues in various conflict and post-conflict environments, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked from 1994 until mid-1996, photographing Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Mostar. His work has been exhibited extensively in Iran and internationally, including at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 2014. Today, Mohsen Rastani lives and works in Germany.

Mohsen Rastani is not a conventional war photographer. His photographs portray people during wartime, recording pain, suffering, and loneliness, but also brief moments of happiness. In his own words, photography is a medium for freezing time within a frame. Yet his images are full of life: a man still stands on one leg, a woman with a burned face is still alive, a child on the street looks back at the viewer with the gaze of an adult. Time is not frozen in any of these photographs.

Mohsen Rastani prints his nightmares, places them within square and rectangular frames, and shows us the profound bitterness of a world filled with catastrophe, reminding us not to forget our fears and nightmares. He attempts to awaken us in a world on the brink of disaster, while also offering hope that peace is possible.

For the first time in Sarajevo, the exhibition brings together a selection of 60 photographs made in Sarajevo and across Bosnia and Herzegovina during and immediately after the siege, between 1994 and 1996. Having arrived in Bosnia after documenting wars in Iran and Lebanon, Rastani records everyday life, the consequences of war, the first moments after the siege, and the people who continue to live despite destruction.

Created during the photographer’s extended stay in the city, these photographs represent a rare and intimate testimony by a foreign author about Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina at a moment of transition from war to peace.