Broken Landscape - Gordan Lederer Memorial
An oversized camera lens punctuated by a single bullet hole forms the Broken Landscape memorial dedicated to photographer Gordan Lederer. Lederer worked as a cameraman for Croatian Radiotelevision. He was killed on 10th of August 1991. by a sniper shot while filming on Čukur hill above town Hrvatska Kostajnica in Croatia.
The public competition for Gordan Lederer Memorial was announced in 2014 by Croatian Radiotelevision - HRT as part of a plan to mark all the locations where HRT cameramans and photogaphers were killed during the war in Croatia in the 90's. Gordan Lederer
Competition was won by NFO architecture studio and sculptor Petar Barišić with a proposal called 'Broken Landscape''. The memorial was unveiled in august 2015 on the 24th anniversary of Lederer's death.
The path is designed as a pathway of Lederer’s life. Concrete slabs are ‘’chained’’ in black steel frames, each engraved with the year of Lederer's life in negative as an interpretation of film frames. The path goes tensely through natural terrain leading to the last slab, a memorial plateu, without a number, representing the year of his death. Bench on the memorial plateu is reduced to the maximum and is really just a part of the path that gently raises from the ground indicating the end of the path and a final view in real and figurative sens.
The Lens alone, thrown in the grass in front of the plateau directs visitors view to the valley looking at "the last shots" that Gordan Lederer took. The glass membrane pierced with a shot from a sniper, stops visitors glance for a moment and confronts them with the reality of events on that location. In the same time perfect stainless steel circle suggests the continuity of life, framing view of the same landscape filmed 24 years ago at the same place. Viewed from the River Una Valley, Memorial is dematerialized as a sun glint reflected on the broken lens surface.
The access path consists of concrete slabs, framed with Black steel frames laid on the grass. Each slab is engraved with the year of Gordan Lederer life. Lense itself, placed 10 m from the memorial plato, is made out of three layers of laminated safety glass, in total 4 cm thick. The middle one was pierced by a sniper shot with the outer glass layers holding it together. Lense frame is made out of stainless steel ring (74 x 59 cm) with outer diametar 4,4 m. Lense is placed into the grass with total height of 4 m.