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[somber music]

[car zooms past]

- And so, this is it, you know?

[Translator] "We don't remember
the kid," he says.

[Gary Knight] You know,
the power of a photograph

isn't the photograph itself,

it's the relationship
with other people

that form with that photograph

that can really change things.

[melancholic music]

[Jeff Bowden] Six years ago, I
was in Dubrovnik with my family,

and one morning, my daughter
came to me and she said,

"Hey Dad, I heard there's
an exhibition of photographs

"all taken by female
war photographers.

Do you want to go?"

And I said, "Sure, let's go."

[melancholic music]

I just remember
walking in front of it.

I described it to a friend as
like a car wreck in my chest.

*

I'm not even aware of the
other people around me,

I'm just fixated on this image.

- I remember exactly
where it was.

You know, you turn a corner

and then the photograph
is on this wall,

and he's standing in front of it

with his arms crossed
and looking at it.

Seeing his reaction to that
photograph, you know,

is the first time that I have
ever seen him be in pain.

- A kid stuck in
the middle of a war.

It was as though that boy

was really standing there,
shivering.

There's a profound
sense of powerlessness.

This child is trapped
in a very adult world.

I just connected with
some sense of that,

that being powerless or
being the subject of forces

that are much larger than you.

- You hope when you're
working in places like Kosovo

that what you're photographing

is something that will
resonate with people outside,

that the events that
are taking place need,

demand attention.

[Jeff] Two years later,
Gracie gave me

a print of the
photograph as a gift.

I frame it and I
hang it in my office.

It was the only
picture I had at home

of someone other than my family.

I saw this photograph
almost every day.

And I had no idea
who this boy was

or what happened to him
or what he'd gone through.

After all of those quiet moments
over a long period of time,

I came to a place where
I wanted go find him.

I wanted to know what
happened to this boy.

The day I got it, I started
looking up Alexandra,

who took this.

In fact, is it on the back?

Maybe it's on the back.

Let's see.

Yeah.

So on the back, there
was this certificate.

And so, from getting this
to looking her up online,

I learned she died and
in fact that she had

a brain aneurysm, like
two and a half weeks

after we went to see the
picture for the very first time.

As interested as I
was at the gallery,

I'm more interested now.

[melancholic music]

First, I wanted to know more
about Alexandra's photography,

so I went to Sipa Press

to see if they would let me
look at her archives.

[Jeff] You think she's
in there?

- I know she's in here.

Here we go.

Actually, this starts out with
a quote of Alexandra herself.

"Between '91 and '99, I spent
a lot of time in Yugoslavia.

"While I was
visiting the country,

"a Serb spoke to me of a custom.

"It was thought wise
to slip a weapon

"under the pillows of children
before they fell asleep.

"And while I was
listening to him,

"I imagined these parents

"and the childhood
of these children,

"then their adolescence,
and a whole life influenced

"by this gesture.

"Then I slipped into the
sleep of these children

"and it was like a dream,
a nightmare that shook

this Balkan region during
the 10 years that followed."

[Mete] This is just for
the negative,

black and white and color.

We have the...

- Oh wow.

Unbelievable.

You know what, his whole
family may be in here.

Central Kosovo, an
isolated refugee camp

in the central mountains.

Ten thousand ethnic
Albanians had been driven

out of their homes by
Yugoslav security forces,

October 1998.

Central Kosovo, C32.

- This one.
- Right.

[Jeff] Exactly, exactly.

- The story-- this one.

Ah yeah, I remember this boy.

[Jeff] Do you really?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

What'd she say?

[melancholic music]

[Narrator] Alexandra Boulat
was born in Paris in 1962.

She started out as a painter,

and eventually found her way

into the male-dominated world
of war photojournalism.

She got her start on
assignments in Croatia,

Kosovo, and Bosnia,

with images appearing in
National Geographic, Time,

Newsweek, and Paris Match.

She joined Sipa Press
when she was 29 years old.

[Jeff] I called Alexandra's
mother Annie and she said,

"If you really want
to know my daughter,

"you need to go
meet Gary Knight.

They worked together during
the war in the Balkans."

I'm on some journey
because of her.

I'm just curious,
what was she like?

- I first met Alex
in the restaurant

of the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo.

You had terrible, sort of,
Cold War-era architecture.

It was the middle of
the siege of Sarajevo.

You had to dodge
snipers when you left.

It was a very, very
miserable place.

And I remember when
Alex came in, you know,

this really sophisticated,
beautiful French girl

came into the room.

It was extraordinary, you know?

It was almost as if she was lit.

- My earliest
memories of Alexandra

are her trademark expression,
which is "Ooh la la."

And that would
introduce a sentence

but it might be ridiculous,

like "Ooh la la, we are
in Kosovo, oh my God."

- We called her Bou La La,

'cause she would
always say 'Ooh la la,'

and, yeah, so the nickname
that she has is Bou La La.

I named my boat Bou La La
after her, actually, yes.

- There was always
energy around her.

She'd brighten us up
in unexpected ways

and we're waiting for something

for hours and hours and hours

and wasting our time
getting frustrated

and Alex was there to lighten--

lighten us up with her
'Ooh la la.'

[Ron Haviv] One of the most
important things about Alex

was her dedication to her work.

She was so hardworking

and so smart about
what she was doing.

We became fast friends, and we
worked together quite a lot.

Then Alex, myself, and
five others founded VII.

There's a lot of stuff that
she and I were together for.

This...

this.

For this...

for this.

Um...

[Jeff] At that time, were
you and she traveling together?

[Ron] We were.

- Okay.

Were you with her
at this exact date?

- I don't know.

We would go back
every day to the area

to document what was going on.

This was a very
obviously important part

of the story at the time
of people taking refuge.

They were being expelled
from their villages

and they were hiding
in the mountains.

And it's quite possible that

this kid could be over here

and she just turned around
and I didn't see him

or didn't photograph him
or whatever.

- Alex was very, very interested
in the lives of others

and exploring the
lives of others

and communicating
about those lives

and challenging the way that
we all think about the world.

And I think Alex had already,

even at this age and
this stage in her career,

lived a pretty full life.

I mean, she'd gone through a
lot of love, a lot of loss,

a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety,

a lot of pain, a lot of joy.

And all of those things would've
informed her photography.

The success of the picture
for me isn't the picture,

it's where the
picture takes you.

For starters, she's
photographing an ordinary person

doing something very ordinary
at an extraordinary time.

This is somebody who is
extremely anxious and concerned,

and he would've been in
late 1998, or early '99,

in Kosovo, for sure.

[Jeff] I went back to
War Photo Limited

to meet Wade.

I hadn't met him on our
first visit to the gallery.

He told me that the
original print of the boy

was still on display upstairs.

And he was exhibiting his own
photos from the Balkan wars

for the very first time.

You know, so many of his
images are of young people.

[melancholic music]

- So, just to know it's
a story of everyday life,

this guy still insists
on covering his car.

But when you see how many
holes that are already in it,

I wonder why he bothers
to cover it, you know?

- All in the front too.

- Yeah, I mean, it's
shrapnel-ridden,

for the trash.

But yeah, he's determined
to keep the rain out.

- So it's a fantastic picture.

- But, you know, the
other irony is here

that you see these ladies,

they're lighting one
cigarette off another,

because they don't
have lighters.

Lighters ran out months ago.

Nobody has a goddamn
lighter anywhere.

Matches are gone.

It's hard to find a light.

That's how low things got.

[melancholic music]

[Narrator] Many say
the Yugoslav wars

were Europe's deadliest
conflicts since World War II,

infamous for the war crimes
of mass murder and genocide,

resulting in the deaths
of 140,000 people.

The conflicts in
the Balkan regions

were ignited by the
collapse of communism,

with the 1991 war in
Bosnia setting the stage

for widespread brutality
that would take place

in Kosovo starting in 1998.

[melancholic music]

- I told Wade, "I want to find
the boy in Alexandra's photo.

"Do you think it's possible?

And if it is, how do
I even go about it?"

And almost immediately he said,
"There's one guy you need.

You need Birol Urcan and I'll
put you in touch with him."

Wow.

Take a look at this.

I'll never forget
the 11-hour drive

from Dubrovnik into Kosovo.

It really felt like
entering some other land.

I have no idea what's next,

and I only have one name: Birol.

- I remember the roads,
you know?

Like this kind of roads.

And a very difficult time

or very interesting
time of my life.

It was like every day,
"Okay, I'm gonna die today?

No. Okay, we survived today."

Are we gonna see
any children dead?

Or women or, you
know, just like,

what do we see
today in the field?

[Jeff] What is the fixer?

- It's kind of a
guide, if you want,

because in the newspaper
the journalist,

definitely, the
reporter is the boss.

Although there may be other
jealous colleagues from fixers

but I was the best one getting
through the check points.

I have this ability
of getting around

in difficult situations.

Can we go there, you know?

Or can we reach on time?
Can we get back on time?

Can we get any pictures?
How do we get there?

Well, I'll take you there.

The shortest,
fastest, safest way.

- So I'm going this way?

- Yes.

- Hi, I'm Jeff.

Really, thank you for coming
over here on Saturday.

- Pleasure's all mine,
pleasure's all mine.

- Until the point at
which I was willing

to come over here with Birol,

the only thing I had was
really whatever I'd read

and just my experience.

- It was probably
the moment when you

thought of yourself as
a person who also has

some responsibilities
that go beyond

the family and the community.

And then you said, "My God,
I must be oblivious

"to the destinies of the
people across the world.

This boy here reminds me
that there is a world"

beyond, what, Dallas, or Texas?

But the interpretation
of the photo

is contaminated with
your cultural beliefs,

what you see here.

- Probably, sure.

- In a way, it's so
American of you to just

go somewhere and
meddle into something

that you would sometimes
regret, "Why am I doing this?"

It's so, I've seen this before.

I mean...

[Birol] I've seen all kinds.

- I'm an American.

- But really, it's so American
in a way that, you know,

this naivete is a privilege.

- I know.

- Naivete, altruism,
humanism are privileges

of people who have
safe and certain lives.

- Oh, interesting, yeah.

Well, I'd say this:
I can't even process numbers.

When I hear numbers in the news,

that just makes no sense to me.

This makes utter sense to me.

- Well, Mr. Walt Whitman.

[Jeff laughs]

I do understand your
entire inclination towards

this great world of emotion.

- I feel like I've
been cut up in here.

[Dukagjin] We've just seen
all kinds.

[Jeff laughs]

No, but really.

- You mean you've seen my kind.

I think that's what you mean.

- We've seen altruists
and we've seen humanists.

We've seen terrorists.

We've seen, so experience
makes the man.

[road hum]

[Jeff] Why did you say yes
to this?

- It was interesting,
challenging,

and brought me back to
the times of war somehow,

which, in general, I don't
like those times, you know?

But it was kind of a,

I still think of myself
as a fixer, you know?

I kind of was proud of what
I'm doing then, you know?

Wade contacted me on Facebook,

and I have kind of contact
with most of the people

that I worked during the war

and I know Wade from
the New York Times,

but I haven't seen
him since then.

So he comes for this,
you know what he says?

"There's an American
guy looking for a boy

and who was in a picture
taken by Alexandra Boulat."

After that, Wade
sends me that picture

and my first thing in my mind
is to put it on Facebook.

But then I said, "Okay, yeah,
you put it on Facebook

but that's not the way to,
how you solve this issue."

It may take ages to
find him like that.

And then I tried to draft
a plan kind of in my head,

identifying the location where
the picture's been taken.

[melancholic music]

- Birol takes me west
of Pristina,

into the Drenica Valley

where he thought the
photograph was taken.

We started by going
from school to school.

This is it right here.

We knew the boy wouldn't
still be in school

because the picture had
been taken 14 years ago.

We were hoping that by talking
to administrators or teachers

that we would find
somebody who knew the boy

or at least who knew
the boy's family.

You're probably more
knowledgeable about

than we are here.

I really didn't know anything
about Kosovo when I showed up.

It was really my
daughter who took me

to the gallery the
very first time.

It was the first time I ever
saw this picture of this boy.

Birol comes up with this
idea of going on the news,

so he contacts KTV,
the local news station

to see if they'd do some
kind of story on the search,

hoping that the reach
of the broadcast

will turn up some kind of clue.

[Jeff] We went to a
bunch of different schools,

but we don't turn up
any promising leads.

We tried to stay in that
valley, within, say, 50 miles.

People would look at
the picture of the boy

and disagree on where they
even thought it was taken

or where to go look next.

[melancholic music]

- I combed through, I mean,
probably thousands

of photographs online of
children from that war,

looking for him.

One night, it was probably
2:00 in the morning

and I thought that I had found,
my dad was out of town,

I thought that I had found
a photograph of him dead.

- What we have gone through
in the Balkans is...

has been shocking for us.

It has been invisible
in terms of warfare,

but it has been extremely
tragic in terms of death.

So what you got and what you saw

was a war done
against civilians,

which is why we never
really called it a war.

We called it massacres,
we called it tragedies,

we called it...

we called it...

slaughter.

The major aggressive narrative
back then was led by Serbia.

For being the biggest republic
in the former Yugoslavia

and the strongest one,

Serbia and the Serbian
regime felt that

Yugoslavia is being destroyed

by runaway or
breakaway communities,

namely, Croatians, Bosnians,
and specifically Albanians.

So in the end, Serbian regime,

which was led by
Slobodan Milosevic,

they decided that
they could utilize

whatever the grand institutional
legacy of Yugoslavia was,

and that was the army.

[mortar fires]

[somber music]

First clashes start
with Slovenia.

They end that very quickly

but the war then
transfers to Croatia.

[shells exploding]
[somber music]

It became obvious
that there's gonna be

a very specific
take on this war,

which was later to be
known as ethnic cleansing.

[machine gun firing]

The war then
transferred to Bosnia,

which was even more
complicated ethnically.

In order to produce some sort of
demographic logic in Bosnia,

there had to be, they thought,
massive ethnic cleansing.

[somber music]

Deportations, and whoever
does not want to leave,

mass killings.

So Bosnia was one of the
most horrible moments

in the Eastern European history.

And then came Kosovo.

[somber music]

[mortar fires]

[somber music]

There was another very
specific take on Kosovo

which made it
different from Bosnia,

and that was the
ethnic cleansing

not in terms of
specific enclaves

but the ethnic cleansing
of the entire Kosovo.

- It was always evident when
we were working in Bosnia

that Kosovo, the war
in Kosovo would come,

and as that war progressed,
it was evident

that Kosovo would
be the endgame.

[somber music]

[Gary] There was no real good
reason for that war.

It was a really mean,
hubristic war in the end.

It was a war that should
never have happened.

[Narrator] When Alexandra
started working in Kosovo,

things were already desperate.

850,000 Kosovar Albanians
were being displaced.

Some were on trains
to Macedonia.

Others were in plastic
tent refugee camps,

protected by the
Kosovo Liberation Army

or KLA.

*

[Gary] Certainly, by the
time Kosovo appeared,

I had become really
angry with Milosevic.

He had this huge
specter of war crimes

that were not being prosecuted.

So when I went to Kosovo,
I was determined to focus

on the issue of war crimes.

So I was seeking out
places where people

were tortured and killed

because that's the story
that I was really working on.

My experience wasn't one
of the act of conflict.

It was really the reconstruction
of it and the memory of it.

So it was a different
kind of nightmare.

*

- You know, the
Balkans were a very

dangerous place for journalists.

At the end of that conflict,

more journalists had been killed

than any other war
since World War II.

[Gary] When you are
confronted by danger,

you respond to it as anybody
else would, generally speaking.

You know, you feel it
and it will influence

the decisions you make.

But that obviously has an impact

on the story you're
trying to tell,

and the only function
of a journalist in a war

is to tell the stories.

[Ron] I think this photograph
is a good example

of a single frame having impact.

A friend of mine, a
Serbian photographer,

got a phone call that
fighting had started

just over the border in Bosnia.

And so I arrived there
and then on the third

or fourth day of fighting,

Arkan, who was a
paramilitary leader

of a group called
the Tigers arrived.

Arkan was a very
charming psychopath,

and Alex asked him if we
could take a portrait of him.

When I saw Arkan again
during this battle,

I reminded him that I had
photographed him with a tiger

and I asked him if I could
go along with his troops,

and they wound up
executing unarmed civilians

in the middle of town
in front of a mosque.

And while they were shooting
and people were screaming,

the whole time they
were telling me,

"Don't take any photographs.

Don't take any photographs."

There was a truck
that had crashed

in the middle of the street

and I went and sort
of stood by the truck,

which blocked the view
of me from the soldiers,

and photographed
the woman as she was

trying to save her
husband's life,

and then they shot her.

And they brought another
woman and they shot her.

And I didn't have a
photograph of the soldiers

with the victims
in the same frame,

and I thought it was
incredibly important,

in order to be able to prove

without any doubt
what was going on,

to make sure that they
were in the same frame.

So I had to go in the
middle of the street

and I sort of just
framed the lens

to get a photograph of
them walking by the bodies.

And from my left
came this young kid,

very brash, he was probably
about 18 or 19 at the time.

He just came into the frame

and brought his foot
back as if to kick them

and I took two frames
and put the camera down,

and they turned and looked at me

and I gave them a big smile

and they looked at me and
smiled and then we left.

[melancholic music]

- As I was questioning
this journey,

Alexandra's mom told me
that her daughter believed

we have a responsibility
to the things that move us.

But as I learned about the war
and about what this country

went through, I hoped I wasn't
just opening up old wounds

or hurting anyone.

[melancholic music]

The next morning I turn
on my phone and the screen

is lit up from texts and
phone calls from Birol.

The texts say, "Call me,
someone has come forward."

I head straight to meet
Birol, he's with the boy

who's now in his late 20's.

As I turn the corner though,
the first thing he says

is no cameras.

We start talking and he
seemed like he was about

the right height.

Seemed about the right shape.

I start looking at his ears.

I've been reading about how
ears are a better finger print

than finger prints,
they just don't change.

So as he's talking,
I keep looking at his ears

and it's just not adding up
and at the same time

his stories aren't connecting.

Eventually I just
kind of hang my head,

and I'm thinking, "Okay,
this is not the guy."

- Photos like this are
signatures of a collective fate,

a collective destiny.

I was gonna say
the way he looks,

is the way a person who has
been through a lot looks like.

You know how
Charles Bukowski says,

"By the time you get 50,
everybody gets

the face he deserves,"

but if you happen to be 12
and you get the face

of a 50-year-old, then
probably something has gone

badly wrong in your life.

- Yeah.

- What makes wars alike, wars
in Kosovo specifically,

is that they were conducted
with such ruthlessness

at the very end of
the 20th century.

So, the horror of Kosovo is
the fact that it was so well

documented.

To be honest with you,
sometimes I wish it wasn't.

Because what you have, what
you can find in archives

across the world is
a nation exposed.

Everybody saw how we look
when we are beaten up,

our houses burned, just
dumped there in their

worst possible moments.

And there's CNN going after
you asking you difficult things

such as, "How do you feel?"

How the hell do
you think I feel?

My house has just
been burned down.

- The fact that you stood there,

and you didn't change
your expression,

you didn't flinch,
you didn't uncross your arms,

you didn't try to put
a smile on the face,

that's why at least at
that moment in history,

that's why the
world did something.

- He is exposed, he knows that
you're taking a photo of him,

he may know that you're doing
this so that the world knows,

but he doesn't care because
everything he finds dear

has gone in flames,
even his privacy.

He is going to refuse to
be related to that photo.

He doesn't want to be
the boy in the picture,

he wants to be someone else,
just like me, and Birol,

and everybody.

We do not want to be
remembered as refugees.

We want to be remembered as
natural and normal contemporary

citizens of the world today.

Privacy has to have
a level of amnesia.

[melancholic music]

[Jeff] The day's and nights
just seemed to drag on.

I wasn't even sure
if he was alive.

But then maybe he's right here,
cheering on his team.

Maybe I just walked right past
him without even knowing it.

Meanwhile, life in Pristina
kept moving forward.

And yet the war still
echoed in the street.

[somber music]

- When you look at the picture,
it doesn't have a lot of action

or it doesn't have a lot of,
it just single, quiet,

very story telling picture.

It was probably a quiet day,
it was probably a day

where nothing was happening
and she wanted to do some

pictures with the refugees.

She just went like that
and she saw him.

And she saw the
expression on his face,

and she took a picture.

I wouldn't.

Here's the picture that
was trying to find.

I was really young,
and I was really brave.

And I went to a lot of
situations where I was--

I mean, I don't know how I
survived basically.

Nothing happened to me.

- A lot of photographers
who cover war

make it their business to
photograph war as a spectacle.

And war can be a spectacle.

Where I think most of us fail,

and I include myself
in this, is... we don't

deal with the mundane, the
mundanity of ordinary life

in a war is in fact a
spectacle in itself, right?

There's nothing
exploding necessarily,

there might not be
anything burning.

And there may not be
guys firing guns in there

but it's the impact of war
on society, and on civil life

that I think is
really fundamental,

and Alex understood
that very well.

And she made it her business
in war, generally speaking

to photograph the impact
of war on ordinary people.

[Ron] There is absolutely a
way to show war without guns,

and I think that actually
those photographs are so much

more important
than the photograph

of the soldier with the gun.

The effect of war on civilian
population, what that means

to daily life, what that
means to something that

you and I and everyday
person can relate to,

is like this is what happens
when war comes to you.

You can't live in your home.

You can't go shopping.

You can't have your normal life,
you become displaced,

you become a refugee,
you lose relatives.

I mean that's the
real effect of war.

And I think Alex's work without
question really explores

that in a very deep
and important way.

[Birol] When Milosevic
took over in Kosovo,

we were desperate, repressive.

No schools, no jobs,
no future, no nothing.

So when KLA showed up,
most of the young people,

even old people, middle-aged
people, everybody was excited.

It was like oh my god you know,

it is still one of the
happiest moments of my life

because I see these guys in
uniform, I'm like oh my god

this is my soldier.

[Narrator] Adem Jashari led
the fight against

the Soviet establishment
and was known as the father

of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

After several unsuccessful
attempts to capture

or kill him, Serbian
forces launched an attack

against Jashari's home in
Prekaz in March of 1998.

The battle that followed
resulted in the

death of 58 members of
Jashari's family,

including Jashari himself,
his wife, and son.

[Dukagjin] It was not the
first of the actions that

were undertaken by
Serbian security forces.

But it was the most shocking,
it was the most brutal

and it was done with
a particular zeal.

It was done as a show of,
not only force,

but also as a show of
absolute mercilessness.

What makes Jashari's tragedy
particularly interesting,

and important is the
fact that it was done

in front of the very eyes
of all international media.

I was watching the entire
story from a little mountain.

[Jeff] You were there?

[Dukagjin] Yes of course.

They've killed everybody,
they lined them up like cattle

in the stable and opened the
scene for the world to see.

I will of course
never forget the day

when we went in the
stable to see the corpses.

And I was there together
with at least 100 TV crews,

and everybody from
Reuters, to France Press,

and Serb policeman looks at
you and you see in his eyes

that he is--

[Jeff] He could kill you
and not feel a thing.

- And not only that, but
it's as if you would see

a little doggy crying
over his mom's corpse.

You are a bit saddened, but
it's a dog nevertheless.

- What's the message?

- The message is
'You Albanians are the

children of the lesser god.'

'You're worth less, so killing
you is not really a crime.'

But after that day,
exactly a day after,

there were 200 thousand people
protesting in Pristina.

This whole city was crowded.

And ever since that day,
until this very day,

Kosovo Albanians became
extremely aggressive.

It truly has changed
our collective nature.

- It's the Alamo.

- It's literally the Alamo.

[ominous music]

[Jeff] During that time
over 150 thousand refugees

were internally displaced,
and another 700 thousand

were displaced
outside the county.

So we were looking for a boy
who's one of 150 thousand people

who'd moved into
these tented camps.

The process of trying to find
him seemed at some moments,

futile, no one remembered him.

[melancholic music]

[road hum]

Birol remained determined,
he arranged through Dardan

for me to go on the biggest
television show in Kosovo,

called Oxygen .

I could tell he was thinking,

"This is our last chance
to find this boy."

- Oxygen is popular.

It's popular also
in the villages.

- How many people you think are
watching on any given night?

- It's the most
popular for sure.

Because we do not have
too many TV shows.

[Balkan music]

[applause]

[door opens]

[applause on TV]

- Hello welcome my buddy,
how are you?

- Nice to be here.

- I'm here to try to locate
someone who is in this book,

from a photograph that
was taken in 1998.

[Jeff on TV] Yeah, I wanted to
know who he is, who took it,

and that's why I'm here.

[applause]

[applause]

[applause]

- Thank you.

[upbeat TV show music]

- I didn't see myself, by the
time Kosovo came around,

in any way shape or form
as a neutral observer.

I was a participant.

And I think for a lot of the
journalists of my generation

in that war we pretty much
all felt the same way.

We were working with the media,
and I think we produced

good journalism, fair
journalism, but we were really

actors in that story as well.

Yeah we were very angry.

- I think it's a combination
of understanding,

for myself, that I understand
that I'm creating this document

this body of evidence
for whatever is going on.

I'm contributing to sort of the
historical record of humanity.

It's often thought
of as a photographer

covering these situations
when you're at a funeral

that you're there exploiting
them and taking advantage

of them, and how dare you.

When in fact actually in these
situations these funerals are,

in essence while
personal, are also

for lack of a better word,
political.

And I've been physically
grabbed by a relative,

dragged into the room where
they're grieving over the body

and told to photograph this,
why else are you here?

Show the world what happened
to my mother, father,

son, brother, tell them.

He or she died because of X

and I want the
world to know that.

- I cried only
once in the field.

[Jeff] What happened?

- I got a call in the
morning it's 6:30.

It was the international
Red Cross guys,

they said, "Birol, you
got to rush here.

Horrible things happened
in the village of Hombri."

I can not even describe it,

I started crying.

First time.

Translating and crying,
you know,

I still don't want to remember
this, but I did it, you know,

and I hate this.

And that's triggered
the change in the war.

So that was the time after
this story they brought

international observers.

And I'm proud I was part of
the team that made it happen.

Probably you know, like
New York Times article,

had quite an influence on that.

- Because of the work
of the journalists,

the fact that we were there
on the ground again in Kosovo,

photographing the same thing
and putting visual pressure

and telling stories,
not just the photography.

Tony Blair and
President Clinton,

they started to act much faster.

[music becoming more upbeat]

[Bill Clinton] My fellow
Americans, today our

armed forces joined our NATO
allies in air strikes against

Serbian forces responsible
for the brutality in Kosovo.

We have acted with resolve
for several reasons.

We act to protect thousands
of innocent people in Kosovo

from a mounting
military offensive.

We act to prevent a wider war,
to diffuse a powder keg

at the heart of Europe that
has exploded twice before

in this century with
catastrophic results.

And we act to stand united
with our allies for peace.

- There's Bill Clinton.

Do people really love him here?

[Birol] Absolutely.

[Jeff] Really?

[Birol] Ya.

- How long has this
statue been here?

- The statue has been here
like two years now.

- Really?

- But it was named Bill Clinton
Square immediately

after the war.

- Oh really?

[Birol] I mean, he would win
any elections for his lifetime

in Kosovo forever.

- Really.

- There's no question about it.

[dance music]

[Jeff] Wait, what is
that store?

[Dardan] "Hillary"-- that is the
store when Hillary visited

Kosovo she stopped to see
the Bill Clinton statue,

and then she entered in
this shop and the owner

gave her a present, some
clothes from the shop

and she took it and
it was on the news.

[chuckles]

["Star Spangled Banner"
instrumental rendition]

- Oh my word, wow.

[Jeff] Oh my goodness gracious.

[music continues]

[Jeff] Incredible.

[Jeff] Wow, and he is more
proud of America

than a lot of Americans.

If Bill Clinton walked into
this room, what would he do?

- Let me tell you why this
is interesting to me.

Because if you went in any
house in the United States,

you would not see these two
pictures in the same room.

Thank you.

[show theme music]

[Host] Welcome!

[applause]

- I'm checking email and I see
an urgent note from Birol.

The first sentence is, "I'm
proud to report we have him."

- I was just glad to know
that he was safe

and I was super, super excited.

I was like, I want to go.

[upbeat music]

[Jeff] Hey man how are you?

[Birol] Welcome again.

[Jeff] Good to be here.

[Birol] Absolutely good
to see you, hi.

[Gracie] How are you, thank you,
it's nice to meet you.

[Jeff]] We were all just
kind of floating,

like, "Wow, we found this guy,"

and that felt fantastic,
you know?

Turns out his name was Sadik.

I said Birol, what does
he do, what's his work?

And he said, he is
a wedding singer.

He said which is a big deal.

But I think his dream
was to be a pop singer.

And one of his dreams was to
perform on the TV show Oxygen .

- Immediately when my dad
found out that

he was a wedding singer,
he talked to Birol like,

maybe we can do something.

And so it was this, we thought
this super exciting thing

that maybe this could be his--
maybe this is his shot.

This is different, is this it?

- Yeah this is it,
I went on so...

[Gracie] Do you see him?

- No but we need, let me go in
the back and find Birol.

[ambient chatter]

[Gracie] I was pretty nervous,
if this kid is just like,

hey nice to meet you,

you know, that's it.

You know, my dad's
gonna be crushed.

- Oh yeah, hey Birol,
I walked right by you.

So which is he?

Wow, how are you?

Good to see you,
what did he say?

- Welcome to Kosovo.

- Oh thank you, thank you,
okay good to see you.

It's great to meet you
after this long time.

Good to see you.

All of you, all
of you came today.

He didn't see the
original newscast that had

the photograph in it, but
one of his sisters did.

And when she heard the story
she said, "That's my sweater,

that's my blue sweater."

And she knew they had cut
the sleeves off of it.

[Jeff] Oh thank you.

[Jeff] What was that one moment
like when he's like,

"Wow that looks like me?"

[Birol] I was very, we call
it an emotion,

it means excited.

[emotional music]

[Gracie] My heart was
just pounding,

I mean I would hug him
and then look at him,

and then hug him,
and then look at him.

I just couldn't believe that
he was right in front of me.

[Jeff] Did he ever think
during that first day,

"Oh I really don't want
to fool with this?"

- I think what I wanted is, that
picture is part of the story,

I didn't want it to
be the whole story.

- Are his parents alive,
and if they are,

do they know about this?

[Birol translating] Yes.

- And what do they think
about it?

[Birol translating to Sadik]

- Yeah, you're the
guest of honor.

[applause]

[applause]

[applause]

- I'm thrilled to find Sadik.

[laughter and applause]

- Tonight is I'm sure the
start of a great friendship,

and it's a friendship that
in some ways is similar

to the friendship of
America and Kosovo,

and I'm thrilled to
be some part of that.

And I'll look forward to
wherever the adventure

takes us from tonight.

[applause]

[applause]

[traditional music]

[sings in foreign language]

[applause]

[applause]

[Host] Bravo!

[emotional piano music]

[cars passing]

[Jeff] The next day, we traveled
with Sadik to his village

to have a traditional Albanian
dinner with his family.

If you could sing with
any three artists?

[Sadik]

- Oh, yeah?
- Ah, yes.

[Sadik]

- And what's your favorite
Bryan Adams song?

* You tell me

[humming]

* Know it's true,
everything I do

* Oh, I do it for you

[cheering and applause]

[Jeff] Sadik, is this right?

- Yes, yes, go, go.

[laughing]

- There's his dad.

[Jeff] Nice to see you.

- Hello, how are you?

[Jeff] Nice to see you.

[Jashar] It's cold, huh?

[Jeff] Yeah, it's freezing.

[laughing]

[Jashar] Yeah.

[Jeff] Yeah, it's freezing.

[Jashar] Not so much.

- I'm from Texas where it's hot.

[Jashar]

- You know, I felt like I was in
a really special place.

I mean, I knew that
they'd spent seven years

trying to rebuild that house,

after it was burned down.

How are you related
to the family?

- Yeah, we're family.

[indiscernible]

[Jeff] So, Sadik is your cousin?

Well, nice to meet you.

- Thank you. Also.

[indiscernible chatter]

[Jeff] You knew her?

- This was my mother.

[Jeff] Really?

[Jashar]

[Shani]

[Jashar]

[Jeff] Really?

[indiscernible chatter]

[Jeff] Hey, did you see
this one over here?

Is this you?

- Yeah.

- Do you remember the
photographer?

- They walked two and a
half days, Sadik says.

[Jeff] Was everything still
here when you got here?

- Do you remember it?

[silence]

[barking in the distance]

- Serbs were fighting and
were shelling our village.

We thought that it
would be safe here,

to seek refuge in
the mountains, here.

[barking in the distance]

- But I don't want
to see them anymore.

Ever.

[indiscernible chatter]

- Sadik asked me to see the
photos that I had taken

the night before.

[laughing]

[Gracie] There's a couple?

[laughing]

Somehow, for him not
speaking English,

you know, we went through
all the photos, you know,

and his friend was
translating a little bit.

After dinner, I could see
that there was some shuffling

or what not, and the mom
has these yellow flowers,

and this chocolate,
and just held onto me,

and said thank you, and
I could hear Sadik say,

you know, that's from me.

[Gracie] That's from you?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

[soft uplifting music]

[Jeff] After the war,
the family rebuilt their home,

and Sadik went back to school
like a lot of the other kids.

Started singing when
he was pretty young.

After high school, he
started singing in weddings.

His parents are older, and so,

they really do rely on him.

[slow dramatic music]

Kosovo's gone through
hard times since the end

of the war, and it's
tough to find jobs,

especially for
people Sadik's age,

but eventually, he found
work in construction,

so he gets by,
but it's not easy.

Are you gonna be playing the
guitar or something, too?

[Jeff] Well, they're definitely
making it harder.

[singing in foreign language]

[Jeff] Sadik dreams
of a music career,

and singing live on national
television with Oxygen

gave him a sense of
something bigger.

He doesn't like asking for help,

but I've really tried
to encourage him.

With the help of
his oldest sister,

we tried to get a work visa
for Sadik for Germany,

where he'd have
more opportunity.

We tried three times,
but it didn't work out.

- Test.

[Jeff] I helped him make
a music video,

but then, he went on
to make one of his own.

I was thrilled when I found
out that he had done that.

[singing in foreign language -
romantic techno music]

*

[Wade] The picture has a life,
it continues to live.

I mean, it's living now,
and all of this movement

around the world is all
because of this one photograph,

and, for me, that's
amazing, you know,

that's a miracle that
this photograph is alive.

- The story of Jeff being
affected by Alex's photograph

makes perfect sense to me,
and I think it's something

that I think she would be
very happy to know about,

because, in the end, that's
what we want as photographers,

you want the connection,
you want that effect.

I mean, it starts
with one person.

[singing in foreign language -
dance music]

*

[Jeff] Alexander's mother,
early on, I asked her,

"How would your daughter feel
about me going to do this?"

And she said, "Not only
would she be okay with it,

she would have gone with you."

This was the whole
point of her work,

this was the whole
point of her life,

to take images that
really moved people.

[slow dramatic music]

When I look at it now,
I don't see the same photograph

that I saw-- that war photo.

I see a real person,
I know that person,

I know his mother,
I know his father,

I know Birol, and Dardan,
and that picture, now,

it's almost gone from
being a single frame

to part of this continuum,

and we are all a part of that.

[dramatic music]

In the war, were there
people all up here?

Oh, down. Yeah.

Your tent, yeah.

Will he ever come here
again in his life?

[rain falling, dramatic music]

- How long was he here?

- So, for him,

is this a safe place?

- This was a safe place.

Yeah.

- Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, today it's all right.

[Jeff] We should go.

[slow dramatic music]

[upbeat emotional music]

*

[faster tempo upbeat music]

[Balkan music]

[slow dramatic music]