Picturing Dark Tourism: Mostar

The words disaster and tourism seem to be intrinsically paradoxical, yet visits to sites of disaster and death have grown exponentially during the past four decades. Lennon and Foley note that “dark tourism” packages disaster into an economic product that provides interpretation of the event as well as potential economic gain to a devastated community. The community of Mostar, Herzegovina is a postmodern disaster tourism site. Once a symbol of Yugoslavian multiculturalism, Mostar became a battleground in the Bosnian wars of the 1990s. Stari Most, a sixteenth-century bridge that was the largest single span masonry arch bridge in the world, crashed into the Neretva River on November 9, 1993 after being shelled by local Croatian forces. A collaboration of nations, NGOs, and transnational groups rebuilt the bridge; the Stari Most is again an iconic image of the city. Twenty years later, ‘Old Town’ is surrounded by former business districts that are filled with bombed buildings and signs warning of unexploded ordinance. These buildings have become another element of the photographic Mostar tourist experience. This paper examines the construction and use of photographic image in the dark tourist experience.