The war in Bosnia in the 1990s raised to common currency the terms ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’. It brought back to Europe a barbarism not seen since the Second World War; and was the first war fought very much under the eyes of the media. It was also the first conflict fought by killers who knew, even before the war had finished, that a war crimes tribunal awaited them.
Norfolk’s photographs initially appear almost abstract. Yet through these still and beautiful images of ice, water, snow and the land, we can sense the arrogance of killers who believed they could conceal the brutal evidence of their crimes by reburying their victims in ‘secondary’ graves. But over time secrets escape, and the truth bleeds out.