Assignment: Bosnia

Like many who have made it to the finish line at SFSU, Ken Holt wanted to go on a nice, long trip afterward. For Holt, however, the destination wasn't Cancun or Ibiza. After a week or so spent seeing the sights in trendy Prague, Holt headed south to "the former Yugoslavia," a region which has worn out the term "war-torn" in the journalist's lexicon, for a four-month tour as a photographer for Agence-France Press.

"Actually, it was the quietest part of the war," Holt says. Nonetheless, he walked through a town being bombed, ducked sniper fire, was arrested twice for "taking pictures where I wasn't supposed to," and nearly got in a fight outside a mosque, again, for taking pictures, even though he had received permission from the local Imam.

A few years back, while the war between Serbia and Croatia was still raging, Holt was considering possible places where he might want to travel after graduation. "I had been hearing about the war in Yugoslavia, so I started to do some reading, and realized I didn't understand it all. This led to a minor in history."

Awarded a spot at the Eddy Adams workshop in New York, Holt made some contacts with people at Agence-France Press. When he was getting ready to go on his trip, he gave them a call. "Fortunately, the Pope was coming, so they needed photographers," he says.

His first stop was at Mostar, a shell-shocked city formely renowned as the most beautiful in Bosnia. Its 400-year-old stone bridge now lies in a heap at the bottom of a ravine, and its inhabitants try to carry on without heat or running water amid sporadic fighting. Holt's pictures of Mostar appeared in a recent issue of "Puncture," a Portland rock-and-roll magazine, along with a story he wrote describing his experiences there.

Next, Holt went in for a close-up look at the remains of civilization in Sarajevo. He found citizens on constant guard against sniper fire, especially in a section of town called "sniper's alley" which is exposed to a Serbian-held hillside. Unfortunately for Holt, the home where he was staying was right on this "alley." One day, he says, about 20 minutes after he made a excursion outside, a man nearby was shot in the side by a sniper and killed.

He couldn't communicate very well at first, but bought a textbook and started teaching himself what used to be called Serbo-Croatian. As with the provinces of the former Yugoslavia, opposing sides in the conflict are claiming various languages of the region as their own. Many of the locals had a strong desire to tell the outside world their plight.

"I'd be out walking, and people would call me over, invite me into their homes and give me food and coffee, even if they couldn't speak English. The Muslims were really friendly and warm. They kept asking me things like, 'Why has America turned its back on us?' They're disappointed with the way things have turned out. Clinton said he would help them and didn't." But, Holt says, they know that covertly, the U.S. is trying to help the Muslims on a small scale.

It's harder to travel in the Serb-held areas, Holt says, so he tended to have more contact with Muslims whom he found to have a surprising affinity to American culture. "The people my age wear Levi's and Converse hi-tops, drink booze, smoke pot and listen to Nirvana. The most popular show in Bosnia is 'Beverly Hills 90210.' Before the war, they were very Westernized. Now things are becoming more divided along religious lines," he says.

Holt admits he feels more sympathy for the Muslims than the Serbs, although some Muslim fighters reported that their former Serbian friends feel they've been coerced by their leaders into participating in the war, and are no more pleased about the situation than anyone else. Despite the apparent insanity of it all, people he talked to estimated the war would continue from five to twenty years longer.

With the Pope due to arrive for the first-ever papal visit to Croatia, Holt eventually headed to Zagreb, where a crowd of 800,000 gathered to hear the Pope speak at a stadium. Holt was able to sell 10 of the pictures he took of this occasion.

Holt also spent several weeks in Bugojno, a town in Central Bosnia. "Three days after I got there, " he says, "the Serbs started a mortar attack. I was out taking pictures, and there were bombs falling all over the place, but nothing landed near me."

Still, Holt jokes, "It was no more dangerous than living in Oakland." Holt shares an old victorian in Oakland with friends and members of his band, Fibulator, whose music he describes as "college radio disjointed art-pop." Currently, Holt is on a five-week tour with his band, promoting their new CD, "Unhammerlike."