Facing the Balkans

What does southeastern Europe look like, apart from our clichés of the Balkans? This question intrigued Harald Schmitt (*1948), formerly a photographer for stern magazine and a six-time winner of the World Press Photo Awards. Between 2015 and 2019 he visited there five times. His pictures show us a region caught up in a state of flux, between religious diversity and innovative entrepreneurship and the area's complicated past. The catalogue is a companion to the Bavarian State Library's annual exhibition in 2021 and features 100 photographers from eleven Balkan countries. Accompanying the pictures are essays by renowned scholars who invite readers to take on a new perspective of southeastern Europe.