Valérie Frey is a writer and photographer whose work has been shown in various exhibitions in Switzerland, France, and Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1998.

She is the author, together with Yves Laplace, of “Les Dépossédés. Bosnie, Liban: inventaire d'après-guerres” (Paris: Stock, 2001), a book resulting from a tour of Heiner Müller's “Hamlet machine” in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1997 and a follow-up in Lebanon (centered around the “Ecrits Nomades” in 2000).

Moved by the question of Europe's borders, she made a journey through Europe in December 2002 and January 2003 in the steps of a novel that was left to her by her grandmother. Based on this new experience, she is about to publish “Europe 60,” a new collection of writings and photographs.

In the summer of 2005, she traveled again in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The exhibition "Face your fears" brings together black-and-white photographs taken in the post-war republics of former Yugoslavia between 1997 and 2005. In much the same way as we have seen the destruction and lengthy reconstruction of the Mostar Bridge, these photographs attempt to capture the shift in the Balkans towards Europe.

The 2001 European meeting of writers (Rencontres Européennes du Livre) in Sarajevo provided me a unique opportunity to travel by train from Sarajevo to Mostar - on a section of railway that once led closer to the Orient.

In 2005, by contrast, it was by car that I approached the internal boundaries, in Krajina (Knin), along the river Neretva (Mostar) and in the Serb entity (Banja Luka). It seems that the border between Europe and Asia which I attempted to reach in 2002-2003 (beyond Vukovar, Belgrade, and the Carpathians) brought me back to this country haunted by the fear, but also the desire for the other, that affects us all.




Photographs (top-down): Corps et âme (Belgrade 2002), Arbre aux nécrologies (Vukovar 2002), Mine ( Mostar 2005). © Valérie Frey