Slomljeni Pejzaž Memorial

Slomljeni Pejzaž, which means Broken Landscape, is a memorial in Hrvatska Kostajnica, a small town on the Una river on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Banovina region of central Croatia. It is a modern, restrained work of public art that commemorates Gordan Lederer, a Croatian cameraman and photographer who was killed in 1991, during the first year of the Homeland War, while working as a journalist. The memorial is also an acknowledgement of the many media workers who put themselves in danger to record a war.

The design is built around a single, powerful image: an enormous camera lens, with a bullet hole through it. The lens is a direct reference to Lederer's profession, and the hole recalls the circumstances of his death. It is shown at a scale that makes it feel less like a small plaque and more like a landscape feature, and it is designed to be seen from a path, rather than hidden away in a corner. The memorial was designed by an architecture studio together with the sculptor Petar Barišić, and the combination of architectural thinking and sculpture explains its clean, abstract form.

A path made from slabs of concrete in dark steel frames leads to the lens. Each slab is engraved with a year, evoking the frames of a roll of film and marking stages of a life. As you walk along them, you move through time toward the lens and the moment of death, an effect that encourages quiet thought rather than spectacle. The memorial occupies a large open area of lawn and trees, so the setting is peaceful, and visitors often come to sit and reflect.

Hrvatska Kostajnica itself was badly affected in the 1990s war, as it lay on the front line, and the town suffered further damage in the 2020 earthquake. The memorial belongs to a cluster of places that reflect that experience, together with other sights in the area, such as the remains of the parish church of St. Nicholas, the Tekija spring and the Djed Hill forest park, which are covered in separate entries. A visit gives a sense of how a small border town remembers its recent history.

The memorial is an open-air site that is free to visit and can be seen at any time of day, although daylight shows the details best. Treat it with respect, as a place of remembrance. A visit takes about fifteen to thirty minutes, and it is easy to combine with a walk along the Una river. It suits visitors interested in recent Croatian history, contemporary design and public art.