The Florist of Sarajevo

Mario Boccia & Sonia Maria Luce Possentini

In February 1992, photojournalist Mario Boccia crosses the market of Sarajevo. He makes eye contact with a florist and they exchange a few words and a coffee. In December of the same year, the photographer is there again. Sarajevo is now prisoner of a fierce siege that will last four years. But the florist stands her ground at the market, despite warnings such as, “Pazite, Snajper!” (“Watch out, sniper!”). When Mario asks for her ethnicity, she simply replies that she was born in Sarajevo; when he asks for her name, she scribbles “florist” on a scrap of paper. The mystery of the florist’s identity fascinates Mario and he keeps coming back, relating her story with unfaltering courage—even after she joins her fellow citizens as a victim of profound tragedy.

The Florist of Sarajevo is a loving tribute to ordinary people indifferent to ethnic and religious polarization, as well as a delicate and poignant story of dignity and resistance.

Mario Boccia is a photographer and a journalist. His articles have been published by many Italian and European newspapers. His photographs have been used by UN agencies and many NGOs. He has been a news correspondent from Sarajevo, Belgrade, Prishtina, Skopia, Diyarbakir and Baghdad. From 1989 to 2005, he covered war, poverty, and environmental disasters (e.g. in the Balkans, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America), trying to identify signs of hope and reconstruction even in the most desperate situations.

Sonia Maria Luce Possentini graduated college with a degree in Art History and attended the Academy of Fine Arts, where she was a student of Stepan Zavrel and Kveta Pakovskà. She is a visual artist and over time she has gained a leading position in the field of editorial illustration. She has worked for the finest and most prestigious Italian publishing houses and has won national and international awards, among them the Italian Andresen Prize for Best Illustrator of the Year in 2017.