04.04.2019.

Exhibition “45 Hellish Nights over Belgrade” in front of the Belgrade audience

On the occasion of marking 20 years since the NATO aggression on our country, the exhibition “45 Hellish Nights over Belgrade” by Tomislav Peternek was opened at the Small Gallery of the Central Military Club.

Welcoming the audience on behalf of Odbrana Media Centre, Lieutenant Colonel Biljana Pašić pointed out that the exhibition “45 Hellish Nights over Belgrae” was premiered in 2017 and since then it has been permanently preserved in the Central Military Club. Because of its extraordinary expressiveness, it deserves to appear again in front of the audience in the days marking two decades of defence against the NATO aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

- A look at the photographs confirms that their creator is not a documentarian, but a photographer with expressed artistic sensibility, who, from day to day, recorded the effects of invisible enemies – Lieutenant Colonel Pašić said, adding that these were striking pictures that captured dramatic moments of explosions, demolition and perishing.

According to the author, the look at the presented photographs awakens memories of unslept nights on the roofs of Belgrade, but also the feeling that all this effort was not futile because it made an undeniable contribution to never forgetting the horrors of the bombing of the Serbian capital in 1999.

- I donated the exhibition to the Armed Forces because I knew that they would preserve it and allow future generations to see what NATO did to us at that time – Peternek said, adding that the images of the downed missiles are proof of the power and size of the Serbian people.

Opening the exhibition, art historian Dušan Milovanović reminded us of the turbulent history of our people and the importance of remembering all the misdeeds that have been done to us not only in the last war, but also in all the previous ones. Referring to the bombing in 1999, Milovanović pointed not only to the innocent victims, the destruction and the destroyed infrastructure, but also the harmfulness of depleted uranium, which is still present.

- The fruit of Tomislav Peternek's struggle against the NATO aggression makes an impressive testimony of misconducts. Being a documentarian using cameras, thaught from the beginning that only proof from the scene is a correct testimony, he made an undertaking and recorded day-to-day atrocities of an invisible enemy – Milovanović said, adding that thanks to him and his photographs, the world had the opportunity to see the horrors of unjust warfare.

This cycle of photographs, he stressed, belongs to the history of the Serbian army because they preserve the story of the heroism of soldiers, reservists and the entire people forever. These photographs, he added, just like many other Peternek's accomplishments, must be preserved and presented to the public in order to serve the empowerment of memory, because it is a work that contributes to unforgetting.

The exhibition that “covers” 24 events during the bombing of Belgrade will be open until 3rd May and is part of a programme marking two decades of defence against the NATO aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, organised by the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Serbia in order to preserve the memory of those days and all innocents victims of unjust warfare and to contribute to the communication of the truth about the events of 1999.