The Invisible Traces Of War
Belgrade 1999 Through The Peephole

Edge of Humanity Magazine

5 hours ago

Photographer Marija B Pontet is an Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘BELGRADE 1999’. To see Marija’s body of work, click on any photograph.

I was seventeen when NATO air strikes began over my city.

While the world watched the conflict from a distance, daily life unfolded behind closed doors. Friends gathered, conversations continued, cigarettes were shared, and time seemed suspended between fear and routine.

I did not photograph destruction. I photographed what remained largely invisible: the waiting, the uncertainty, the faces and gestures, the confined spaces, and the strange coexistence of fear and ordinary life.

The peephole in our apartment door became a threshold between inside and outside, safety and uncertainty. I remember standing there, wondering whether to look through it. I did not dare to look. I made the photograph instead.

These photographs were made on film in Belgrade and now form the core of my ongoing photobook project, The Peephole.

The project has gradually become a reflection not only on what war produces while it is happening, but on what it leaves behind — in memory, in fear, in habits, and in the way we continue to live years later. I am interested in these traces, often invisible, that remain long after the events themselves have ended.

History records the dates. People carry the rest.

Marija B. Pontet is a French-Serbian photographer born in Belgrade. Working across fine-art, documentary and street photography, she uses photography as a way of exploring memory, identity and the traces that time and lived experience leave behind.

Photography entered her life at an early age, when her father gave her a Minolta camera. She later studied photography at university in Belgrade and completed professional photographic training with the Association of Professional Photographers of Yugoslavia.

Her work often moves between personal memory and documentary observation, focusing less on the event itself than on what remains around it: ordinary gestures, intimate spaces, silence, absence and the relationship between people and their environment.

For nearly two decades, while pursuing other professional activities, photography remained a constant presence in her life. She has since returned to it fully and now dedicates herself entirely to her photographic practice.

Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. She is represented by Singulart, presented by The Independent Photographer, and is a member of Street Photography France.

All images and text © Marija B Pontet