Enrico Dagnino
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1994
Dimensions: 197 mm x 130 mm
In January 1994, six children playing in the snow in Sarajevo’s Alipašino Polje were killed by a mortar shell. Enrico Dagnino photographed their funerals at Lion Cemetery. The envelope on display originally carried those film rolls, sent from besieged Sarajevo to his agency in Paris, where the images were devel- oped, edited, and published across Europe and the U.S.
Each week, one photographer would volunteer to smuggle out the group’s film, crossing Sniper Alley to reach the UN-controlled airport. A trusted passenger, often a UN soldier or journalist, would carry the envelopes to safety.
Agencies communicated via telex, and couriers raced to labs to get the first prints. The envelope survived this chain of risk, urgency, and trust. Decades later, it returned to Dagnino’s hands – no longer just packaging, but witness. (text by Claudia Zini)
