A slender man with a gray beard, camera slung around his neck and the cold steel of a gun on his temple, stands on the outskirts of the war-torn Croatian city of Vukovar.
The year is 1991 and a group of Serbian volunteers has just returned from the front.
"One of them was drunk, he took out a gun, pointed it at my temple and said 'I haven't killed any photographer so far, you will be the first,'" recalled Dragoljub Zamurović in an interview with the BBC in Serbian.
"His commander was standing nearby, I look at him, I think he's going to reprimand him or something, and he tells him - 'don't, Mile, it's not nice,'" he adds with a smile.
In the next ten years, Zamurović and his lenses will accompany all the most important events in the former Yugoslavia, from which he was the official correspondent of the French agency Gama.
"The first reportage was about Medjugorje (a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina, famous for the alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary), but then the wars and demonstrations began..."
"In recording all these events, I saw them from a closer distance than other people," he says.
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His photographs, listed under the pseudonym "Art Zamur", were illustrated by some of the largest and most famous media in the world - from the New York Times, through Time, to National Geographic.
Today he is retired, he publishes stories and photos from his rich career on Facebook, and recently he decided to collect them in the books "I remember" and "I remember 2".
The first is a collection of "the most interesting photos from all photo reports" in a career spanning several decades, while the second deals only with wars, protests and conflicts in Yugoslavia.
"In my life, I have never talked like I have in recent years," says the 76-year-old Zamurović.
"I told stories because of these books... I wrote, so I remembered many things, but I am not a historian, I only write what I saw."
Zamurović's life was threatened several times due to his reporting, but he says that he is "not particularly brave".
"I'm timid, but the desire for a photo that will be different often overcomes that fear," he explains, slowly sipping his tea.
"And then I say to myself 'well, it won't happen to me'... And I was lucky that it didn't happen."
March 9 and the 'mercy policeman'
That March 9, 1991 is known for - tanks.
It is about a large, anti-regime protest by opposition parties in central Belgrade's Republic Square.
The resignations of the general director of Television Belgrade, as well as the minister of police, were demanded, which was the first rally against the regime of Slobodan Milošević, who had become president of Serbia a few months earlier.
There was a fierce conflict between the police and the demonstrators, which took two lives.
"At one point, I jumped on a planter, there were several photojournalists next to me, and a police car with a water cannon was coming right towards us.
"The jet of water went from left to right, my colleagues jumped so that they wouldn't get splashed, but I had a plastic jacket and a cap, so I said to myself 'let it spray, whatever happens, let it happen'.
"And the stream went all the way to me, then it stopped, jumped over me and a meter or two later continued to spray," says the photographer, gesturing around with his hands.
For a long time, he says, he thought about whether it was an accident or whether it was a question of a merciful policeman.
"Probably he didn't want to spray me," he adds.
In the end, tanks of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) were sent to restore order, and Zamurović says that "he was lucky to always be where something was happening".
"I had pictures and speeches by politicians and spraying and all kinds of chases, tanks, beatings, one where 12 policemen beat one protester... That was common at the time."
The war in Croatia and 'pretending to be English'
A few months later, Zamurović was asked by Gama if he would go to the Croatian battlefield.
"The director said that he would understand if I refused, because I am not a war reporter, but that this is something the whole world is looking for - everyone had photos from the Croatian side, but not from the Serbian side."
In June 1991, Croatia declared its independence from the SFRY, and soon a bloody conflict began with local Serbs, who declared the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) and JNA soldiers.
"I went to see it, I was really interested, I've never been to the front," says Zamurović.
"I thought it would last two or three days, then it would pass."
One of the first to be hit was Vukovar, a city on the banks of the Danube, on the very border of Serbia and Croatia, which was shelled daily for weeks.
The city eventually fell into the hands of Serbian forces, which included paramilitary units.
"We entered Vukovar with the army and there were corpses all over the city, probably a hundred in one yard, they were taking people out of the basement," says Zamurović.
He felt, he says, like a surgeon when he operates.
"I didn't have the feeling at all that these were people, but scenes from a movie.
"While I was looking at them through the camera, it was as if I was watching a movie... Only when I returned to Belgrade, developed the slides and put them on the table to look at, did I feel sick."
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He remembers one scene in particular.
"There was one of the volunteers I knew, he worked at the Belgrade pump.
"He came to me and showed me his hand, bloody and swollen," he says and points to his right palm, pressing it with his thumb, as if that image still comes before his eyes.
"'I stand and, as soon as someone comes out of the basement, I push them so that they hit the floor,' he told me.
"He was hitting them out of the blue... It disgusted me, I never went to that pump again."
The war in Croatia lasted until 1995 and Zamurović saw off most of it.
During one exchange of prisoners in 1993, he even accidentally crossed the front line and could not return back.
In and out of the basement
In Savraš (a small town in eastern Slavonia) there were about twenty buses with Croatian prisoners.
Through the window I saw that they were forced to hold their heads between their knees, raise their hands with three fingers and sing "who says that, who lies, Serbia is small".
Whoever did not do that, they beat him.
I was thinking about how to make a picture that others don't have, and one of the ideas was to enter the bus and take a picture of what is happening, but to see what is happening outside through the window.
However, there was a United Nations (UN) soldier standing at each entrance and they didn't allow it, but I accidentally bumped into one from Kazan, Russia, where I was, we apologized and he let me in.
The soldiers who were inside got out at one point and the bus started.
"Now it's over, I went to Croatia," I was astonished.
There were no journalists on Croatian territory, only a few cameramen, but all in uniform - I was the only one in civilian clothes.
I was afraid they would think I was a spy or who knows who.
Here I apply the old tactic - I pretend to have all possible permissions.
I got off the bus and started "hi, hello", pretending to be English, started taking pictures and nobody said anything to me, they thought I was allowed.
I photographed the people getting off the bus, where they were greeted by their own people, and the people getting on the bus - Serbian prisoners.
When it was about to end, I noticed that one of them was limping.
"What is it, what are you limping, you weren't limping yesterday," an officer told him.
And this one tells him "you know very well why, you beat us all night in the basement".
And there I saw the small difference between Serbs and Croats.
On the Serbian side, there were journalists everywhere, even next to the bus, and the prisoners were beaten tako for all to see.
There was no such thing on the Croatian side, all the soldiers were starched, well dressed, no one beat anyone, but earlier in the basement...
I tried to get on the bus to go back, but an officer says no way.
And what should I do, I enter a Red Cross tent with the prisoners, hide the devices and myself in the crowd and enter the bus with that column.
So I came back.
Siege of Sarajevo and a stray bomb
The war spread very quickly from Croatia to multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it gained the most terrible momentum.
The three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo began, during which more than 10.000 people lost their lives, including 1.601 children.
While looking at photos from that period, Zamurović especially stops at the picture of Boško and Admira, a loving couple of different nationalities, which became one of the symbols of the war.
They tried to leave the city in 1993, but were killed in no man's land.
Their bodies lay abandoned on the street for days because neither side claimed responsibility.
"Uh, that's the saddest event I've ever experienced," Zamurović says briefly with a sigh.
"They say that Boško was hit first, who fell dead, and then Admira was hit, who was wounded, and somehow she crawled to him, hugged him and they died together."
For every photo shoot around Sarajevo, he says, he had to report to the press center of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) in order to obtain the necessary permits.
"The main one was the daughter of Radovan Karadžić, to whom some colleagues regularly brought gifts, but a good friend of mine also made a big mistake.
"A cat jumped out in his office, he took it and threw it out the door, it was Radovan Karadzic's cat - and of course he didn't get permission."
Karadžić, the former president of Republika Srpska, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 for war crimes in Bosnia, including the genocide in Srebrenica.
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Nedžarići
One day, a Tajma journalist from America came to the Sarajevo area, and Gama hired me to film a report that he was doing.
And he was doing a story about Nedžarići, a part of Sarajevo where there was a home for the elderly.
There used to be a lot of people there, and at that moment there were only 60 old people left from all over Yugoslavia - there were Macedonians and Slovenians as well...
There used to be a lot of doctors and nurses there, but many of them either fled or were killed, so that only one sister remained.
She fed them and treated them and buried them, she was everything.
VRS gave us a man to go there with us, and we went there in some kind of transporter.
When we were entering, The soldier tells us "about a week ago, this same one was hit by a bullet, they all died, but I hope it won't happen again".
AmeriOf course, Kanac got in without any problems, he knew where he was going.
The one from the press office stood still, crossed himself three times and entered.
And what will I do - if I don't enter, there will be no pictures, he can write what he wants, but a picture is a picture.
That was the first time I rode a transporter, it's such a tight space...
And they all had an opening at the eyes of about two centimeters height and ten width.
"Okay, what if someone hits us through the hatch," I ask the military man.
"Nothing, that's your fate... Have you crossed yourself," he replies.
No one hit us, but we were heard hitting the transporter.
"Here, they're targeting us," he says.
Arrived smo to that home for old, huge four-story buildings, surrounded on all sides, like Sarajevo in miniature.
And on the fourth floor, a large unexploded bomb was planted.
"You know what, take it easy here so you don't trigger her," she says.
I went slowly.
Srebrenica and Bratunac
"I was often around Srebrenica and the nearby Bratunac," Zamurović continues.
During the war in Bosnia, Srebrenica was an isolated enclave around which large battles took place and a place where a large number of Bosniak refugees fled.
"The Greek television crew was there and we got permission to climb a peak from where part of Srebrenica can be seen," Zamurović recalls.
"When we got up there, we saw a man going with a horse and plowing.
"Then a soldier said 'what is he provoking me, now I'm going to kill him', and a man from the press service intervened 'don't do it now, there are journalists'... Maybe we saved one life that day."
The longer the war lasted, the more difficult the situation in Srebrenica became.
The commander of the city's defense was Naser Orić, later accused of war crimes before the Hague Tribunal, but ultimately acquitted of all charges.
"I also remember a funeral in Bratunac," says Zamurović briefly.
On Orthodox Christmas in 1993, in the town of Kravica, not far from Bratunac, about forty people were killed, for which Orić was accused.
"When they were burying them, I went up to the nearby church, saw a small window and took a picture from above... That photo was published by Time."
He adds that his photo of the girl near the mortar attracted a lot of attention, so he was asked to do a special report on her.
"I don't know why, she was beautiful - her name was Branka Mitrović, she had a small child and lived in Šumadija, somewhere on the Ibarska highway, where I was.
"She told me that Muslims killed half of her village in Bosnia, and that at that moment her husband, father and uncle were on the battlefield."
Then she stated that she stood in the way when they wanted to shoot a captured group of Muslims.
"She stood in front of them and said 'she can't, kill me'."
Srebrenica was later declared a protected zone by the United Nations, but in 1995 the town fell into the hands of the Bosnian Serbs.
The army of Republika Srpska killed more than 8.000 men and boys in the vicinity of Srebrenica in the following days, which was declared genocide by the verdict of international courts.
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'I can't sleep because of the shooting'
As soon as I saw that they were leaving the city from Srebrenica, I immediately went there.
Outside the city, I found a broken-down bus with women and children - I took pictures of them.
Several VRS fighters brought food, water and gave it to the women and children, one UN soldier took the bowl of water he was given, went from child to child and gave it to them.
Good people always remain good people.
In the beginning, children from Srebrenica were exported in trucks and there were a lot of them, there were broken arms and legs, suffocated children in those trucks... It was very sad to watch.
I also remember a woman who said "all these should be killed - when they grow up they will kill us".
Another came up and replied "oh, don't talk to me about it, I can't sleep at night because of the shooting".
There was also a photojournalist, who actually was more propagandist.
He carried mirrors and a comb with him and gave each VRS soldier to dress up, so that he wouldn't be ugly, he fastened his buttons, I once saw him clean his shoes.
He wanted to show that the VRS fighters are beautiful and neat.
After filming the women and children, I wanted to enter Srebrenica, which Mladić forbade everyone, but I had a man who had a connection with people in the government there.
They hid me in the car and transferred me, we had half an hour.
Srebrenica was deserted, corpses on the streets, it was horrible.
At one point, three people appeared, pushing stoves on some carts.
I took pictures of them and they immediately jumped on me "give me the film, give me the film" - I give it to them.
Later, they told me that after each entry into a place, Mladic gave the fighters 24 hours to take whatever they wanted, and that they were given 48 hours for Srebrenica.
Ratko Mladić, the wartime commander of the VRS, was also convicted of the genocide in Srebrenica.
Zamurović photographed him for an interview that Mladić gave to Figaro magazine during the war.
"I found it interesting that when they asked him about his youth, he said that he had never fought in his life.
"'How come,' the journalist asks him, 'all the children once fought'.
"'No, I wanted to be a doctor and treat children, but my parents had no money, so they sent me to a military school,' says Mladić."
He talked, the photographer recalls, and how he loved Yugoslavia, that he had been a member of the Communist League since childhood and "did not mention Serbia at all".
At the end he asked them if they wanted to go on a helicopter ride with him and they agreed.
"We flew low, just above the trees, so that no one would hit us.
"He showed us the demolished buildings in Žepa (an enclave not far from Srebrenica) and said that he personally ordered it, but that no one touches the bridge, because Ivo Andrić wrote about it.
"Nobody was really allowed to touch him either."
Milosevic and Klaudija Šifer
The war in Bosnia ended on December 14, 1995 with the Dayton Agreement, and a few months earlier Zamurović photographed one of its signatories - Slobodan Milošević.
"A team of journalists from America came and Gama hired me to go with them - Milosevic, of course, had no idea who I was, he thought I was from America too.
"I don't like the portrait to be just the head, like for an ID card, but something else to see."
"At one point, Milosevic took a cigarette to light and I was just about to take a picture, and he said to me in English, 'please don't take a picture of me with a cigarette, so I don't look uncultured'."
He put the camera down, but his portrait ended up on the cover of Time.
Slobodan Milošević was accused before the Hague Tribunal for war crimes during the 2006s, but he died in XNUMX before the verdict was handed down.
That title Time, the photographer adds, also helped him a few years later when Milošević's son Marko opened the Bambiland amusement park in Požarevac.
"I knew that I would only be able to go inside with all the other photographers, and I don't like to be in a group, so I go there a few days before, but I bring Time.
"I go to the entrance and say 'call Marko Milošević so I can show him the picture of my father that I made.'
"'You must be either a very brave man or a complete fool,' Marko tells me."
Požarevac is the birthplace of Milošević and during the nineties it was a strong stronghold of his supporters and a place where Marko Milošević was particularly powerful.
"'Okay, come take a picture of me when you're so brave,' he tells me at the end."
However, that didn't last long.
"After two or three shots, he says 'okay, enough, I'm not (model) Claudia Schiffer'."
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Kosovo and the bombing
The situation in Kosovo began to boil already in the early eighties.
Kosovo Albanians, the majority population of the then Yugoslav province, demanded greater independence within the SFR Yugoslavia, with numerous protests, clashes and arrests.
When, in 1989, Serbia abolished the autonomy of Kosovo - guaranteed by the Constitution of 1974 - and took over the jurisdiction and institutions of the province, only a few believed that a peaceful solution would be reached.
Zamurović was in Kosovo for the first time in 1988 and above all he remembers "misery and misery, Tito's pictures and Albanian flags".
In the mid-1998s, the situation in Kosovo worsened more and more, so that during 1999 and XNUMX there was a war between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Serbian security forces.
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia soon begins, and Zamurović returns to Belgrade.
"Whenever I saw that something had been bombed, I immediately ran there," he says.
"I also knew a woman who worked in the military press center, she informed me what was happening, even the place where the invisible."
We are talking about the Vojvodina village of Buđanovci, not far from Ruma, over which in 1999 an American military plane F-117 was shot down.
"The women played on the wing like winners, and some took off pieces to take home."
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However, he especially remembers the event from 1998, when KLA commander Adem Jašari, one of the most controversial figures of the Kosovo conflict, was killed in Kosovo.
For Kosovo Albanians, he is a symbol of resistance to the regime of Slobodan Milošević, and for Serbia, he is the leader of a "terrorist group" who abused his own family, using it as a human shield.
During the attack, more than 50 people, members of the immediate and extended Jašari family, were killed.
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'whose are you'
I went to photograph that funeral, and with me in the car was Imre Sabo, a friend and photojournalist.
The police did not allow it, all the roads were blocked, but we managed to reach that village by going south through some meadow.
Of course, we immediately split up to take our own pictures.
At one point, three Albanians approach me, they ask me in Serbian who I am, I answer in English that I am Art Zamur from the Paris agency Gama.
They ask me for documents.
"I don't, they're in my car," I say.
"Let's go to the car."
I thought - i'm done
Fortunately, Imre appeared, understood what it was about and said "hello Art, how are you", and they knew him because he was often in Kosovo.
"That's my colleague from Paris, I guarantee him, everything is fine," he tells them.
There I escaped pure death, Imre saved my life.
And the funniest thing is that they then gave us an Albanian guide to explain what was happening.
He talks to Imre in Serbian, and he translates into English for me.
And everything went well until I saw a fellow photojournalist from Pristina - an Albanian.
I'm done, I thought again, now he'll say "hello, Dragoljube, or something like that".
But he was also smart, he understood what was happening.
"'Zamure, you're right that you didn't say you were from Belgrade, you wouldn't have returned alive', he whispered to me."
The fifth of October and the arrest of Milošević
Whenever there was a protest, Zamurović was there.
After March 9, there were large protests during the winter between 1996 and 1997.
The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) then lost the elections in Belgrade and other big cities, and demonstrators walked around demanding that Milosevic admit defeat.
Milošević also organized a counter rally on the streets of Belgrade, when there was also a conflict between the participants of the two rallies.
"Then I went up to a bus stop near the Balkan Hotel, I saw both of them beautifully... Someone wanted a civil war," Zamurović believes.
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Speaking about October 5, 2000, when Milošević was ousted from power in the revolution, Zamurović says that it was "different from other protests".
"There were very few police, that was strange to me, because Belgrade was always full of police at protests.
"They talked to people, joked with them."
When the clashes started and the protesters rushed into the National Assembly, Zamurović entered with them, but quickly left because "most of it was happening outside".
"I see smoke above RTS, people are running away, the television is on fire..."
Three arrests in one day
And there was also a meeting in Požarevac before October 5, when I was arrested three times.
On one side were SPS supporters, and on the other a large number of demonstrators.
I started filming, the policemen came and shoved the three of us into the police station.
Fortunately, I had a cell phone, called my wife and told her to arrest me, she immediately called the free media, like the then B92, and they announced that they had taken me into custody.
By the time we got to the police station, they were already broadcasting it on the radio and the policewoman who was waiting for me there said "we are detaining you now, and we already hear that you have been detained".
"Okay, why, when I'm just doing my job," I ask.
"This is a technical review, give us the film to develop," they say.
Gave them the movie and they tell me I'm free.
"Can I take a picture?"
"Free," they say.
I return to the same place and just as I start to take pictures, they arrest me again.
"People, now they let me go, I even have a paper that they took my film," I tell them - it's not worth it.
They took my cell phone and all the movies.
I borrow films, continue to take pictures, they arrest me again and take my cameras, saying that they will return everything to me after 22 pm.
In the evening, I'm waiting to get the cameras, all the journalists are sitting at the same table, and the chief policeman for Požarevac is with us.
"Okay, what was it like today, getting arrested three times," I ask him.
"Sir, that's because you don't have SPS accreditation," he replies.
"Is this it," I say I take out the accreditation.
"Eh, that's life," he says.
And when I took the devices and headed home, he throws in: "Watch what you're doing, don't let me arrest you for the fourth time today."
In June 2001, Milošević was extradited to the Hague Tribunal, which ended with a lot of drama.
His supporters gathered around the house where he was staying and blocked access to the police with their bodies.
"There was also Ivica Dačić (today the Serbian head of diplomacy and leader of the SPS), there he is by the door," says Zamurović, pointing to one of the photos from that night.
At one point, the police pushed people away and broke into the house.
A day later, Milošević's supporters gathered at Republic Square for a protest that could have been fatal for Zamurović.
"I had two cameras on me, I wasn't recording anything, some people approach me and ask 'who are you filming for', which I hate the most.
"'For myself and my children,' I say.
"They jumped on me, knocked me to the ground, started kicking me, others came as soon as they saw the victim, I managed to get out, but they knocked me down again...
"Broken elbow, arm, broken lens, but what can be done."
Life today
When asked what he thinks first when he returns the film to everything it has been through, Zamurović replies "destroyed country, destroyed people".
"Many in this area are fans - they support the party, country, nation, religion and do not look at things objectively.
"And when you love a football club and someone hits your player you hate him, but when your player hits someone you say 'nothing, it's in the heat of the fight'."
"When I work, I don't root for anyone - I want the truth to be shown, I don't hide anything."
Decades later, does he feel pain when he remembers the suffering he saw?
"Of course," he answers shortly.
"Much more than when I was there."
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