GYURI'S BOSNIA
In March 1993 a Sky News team went to the Eastern corridor of Bosnia to try and access the besieged city of Gorazde. The plan was that some of the team (producers Katrina Balmforth and Arpad Nemeth, editor Stuart Macalister and photographer Steve Connors) would base themselves in a Bosnian army camp in a little-known place called Grebak whilst the reporter Aernout van Lynden and crew Dave Hamilton Green and Scott Drummond and producer Zoran Kusovac walked across enemy lines into Gorazde. One of the support team in Grebak was a Hungarian satellite engineer, Gyuri Bakonyi, who in his free time took many amazing photographs of the scene which was unfolding there – namely the hundreds of people from Gorazde who braved the mountain walk to the supply camp which was set up to provide some basic food for them. It was extremely dangerous as they dodged the guns of their Serbian enemy and also sub-zero temperatures in the snow-covered mountains meant that some died on the way. Gyuri was keen for the pictures to be seen and sent them to Katrina in December 1994 as he knew she was writing a book about their time there. As he explained in his letter, they were low quality prints but they show his skill as a photographer. He also included captions to the photos which have been reproduced in his own handwriting. For 30 years the photos had been sitting in a folder until the book was finally published in 2023. In turn that led to photographer and restorer, Colin Lunt, taking a closer look at the collection which he has managed to restore and enhance. They have now been exhibited in Gorazde. Sadly Gyuri died in 2003 but his memory remains with these wonderful images Katrina Balmforth
August 2025
The public exhibition, featuring 42 of Gyuri's photographs, took place at the Regional Museum in Gorazde during their Festival Month of August. We are proud to have fulfilled Gyuri's wishes for the photographs to be exhibited. Katrina and I were hosted by the Mayor, Museum Director and Festival Director proving the importance of the photographs Colin Lunt |
The book
'The Troubles We Have Seen' by Katrina Balmforth and Nedzad Dozo is available by emailing [email protected] |
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This document includes a letter to Katrina Balmforth from Gyuri which includes his captions to the original photographs
which follow |
Click on images to see Reference numbers and to enlarge
