ECHOES FROM KOSOVO
By British Photojournalist Melanie Friend

To purchase, please supply your address with a cheque for
£23-50 made payable to: B. Storer and send to:
Beverley Storer
(NO PLACE LIKE HOME)
18 High Street
Ingatestone
Essex CM4 9EE

Melanie Friend
Well before Kosovo began to make headlines, Melanie Friend, a British photojournalist, began visiting the region, whose autonomy was revoked by the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. She became familiar with the tactics of the Serbian police, who spread fear through the predominantly Albanian Muslim population.

Her visits were usually brief, but always subject to film confiscation and surveillance. Anyone who helped her was at risk. In 1999, as NATO bombs fell on Serbia and ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo, the author was shooting portraits in the refugee camps of Macedonia--the very type of photographs she had longed to make but could not so long as her subjects lived under Serbian authority. Now that the Kosovars have returned home, it is the Serbs who fear retribution from the neighbours they thought had been driven out for good. As the centuries-old cycle of abuse enters a new phase, Melanie Friend's photographs and extraordinary interviews present to date the most profound, complex and human document of the recent history in the Balkans.

MELANIE FRIEND's prize-winning work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, Time Magazine, The Independent, and Marie Claire among other publications. Her photographs of Kosovar Albanian refugees have been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London as well as in galleries internationally, including the United States. She currently lives in London.

Through a catalogue of beautiful colour photographs and personal testimonies, "No Place Like Home" offers an extraordinary insight into how history is lived by ordinary citizens. How do people persist with the chores of daily life, knowing that at any time their villages, or even their homes, may be targeted? How do they survive the murder of entire families? Or the hope of ever finding loved ones who have disappeared? How do they continue to live in the landscapes where massacres took place - and reconcile the thirst for revenge with the need for peace of mind? These questions, which can be asked in the aftermath of any act of violence, are the subject of 'No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo'.
This book is a portrait of ordinary people living ordinary lives prior to the Kosovo Crisis. As a local explained during a Hope and Aid Direct convoy to Kosovo "there are 2 million people now in Kosovo, that means there are 2 million histories".
This publication is an insight into the emotions of Albanians, Serbs, Roma, Turks and Kosovo's other ethnic communities, cleverly laid out in a calm but gripping manner.

'No Place Like Home' is currently available for only £20.00 + £3.50 Postage & Packing (UK).
Overseas orders may incur additional postage and packing charges, please e-mail for details: bevstorer@tiscali.co.uk


'No Place Like Home' will also benefit Hope and Aid Direct, as each copy sold will bring a £3.00 income to the charity and therefore, go back into helping the causalities of conflict regardless of race, age or gender.

Twice a year the UK charity Hope and Aid Direct, visit some of the same areas as shown in this book and unfortunately, it looks like something that will have to continue for many years to come.

So many people still rely on aid like this to enable them to survive.

Hope and Aid Direct wish they could do even more but all their members are volunteers who already give up loads of their spare time to raise funds for the next trip and then use their holiday entitlement to be part of the convoys of aid, which take about two weeks to complete.