LOS ANGELES TIMES
Life During Wartime
April 2002
... a beautiful and terrifying book. ... If you know nothing about the Bosnian war, Evil Doesn't Live Here makes a superb primer. ... Sarhandi's introduction provides one of the best overviews of the conflict's history to be found anywhere. ... And then there are the posters. Through them we experience, nearly unmediated, the power of propaganda and the emotional resonance of political art in times of terror. The posters speak to us as though we were there - as though we might enlist or resist, as though we were neighbors and not strangers a world and a decade away.
Read complete text
SPEAK UP
August 2005
While one might expect this book to act as a summation of the Bosnian War and all its atrocities, the reader will be most impressed with the comprehensive collection of posters and the trouble the authors went through to accommodate some of them. Ultimately, Evil Doesn’t Live Here serves as a looking glass into a brief moment of time and appeals to those fond of raw design aesthetics.
Read complete text
GRAPHIS
January/February 2003
The book is a disturbing reminder of a conflict that is in remission but remains uncured ... Sarhandi does a nice job of summing up the Bosnian war's mind-blowing complexity and placing the posters in their political and cultural contexts. ... Evil Doesn't Live Here is valuable for preserving relics of all sides of a war that is receding too quickly into the mists of recent history, even as its perpetrators stand trial at the Hague.
CREATIVE REVIEW
March 2002
Sarhandi's economic introduction surveys the war with a properly cynical eye. Perhaps more impressively, little opinion is threaded through the captions, which describe and interpret the illustrations. Judgement is left to the reader. Lies and malice - whether from the mouths of politicians or from the billboards - indict themselves.
NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS
Conditions Of Urgency
Fall 2002
... present[s] stunning and humbling examples of the kinds of liberating and debilitating artistic decisions that emerge from the extreme constraints presented by life and death situations.
LIBRARY JOURNAL
July 2002
These powerful examples of graphic art not only reveal two divergent sides of the human psyche but also remind us that the height of human creativity is often achieved under the most hostile circumstances.
EYE MAGAZINE
Spring 2002
... provocative ... passionate.
|
|
