Herzlich Willkommen Im Hotel Hyatt Belgrad, April 1999
Produced during the 1999 bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia, images from the Hotel Hyatt Belgrade present the tranquil life of a hotel in the war zone, occupied by the foreign media. The contrast with the ongoing war raises the question, where is the actual event taking place? While taken on a journalistic assignment, the images were conceived as an art project and meant to convey a certain cynicism about the war reporting from Belgrade at the time, as well as a study of the hotel space as a zone of spectacle. Art historian Branko Dimitrijevic writes: »These photographs were not ›the other side of the reality‹ but reality itself, for […] the war turns out to be not just the spectacle of explosions, burning bridges, devastated houses, but also a visualisation of the ›quarantine strategy‹ which reveals an attitude towards the event […] characterised by cynicism instead of empathy and by relativism instead of engagement.«
