Beauty in the Breakdown

In front of a bombed out Yugoslav bunker, colorful plastic bags blown into trees wrap themselves around the branches like ornaments.

Shoes on an electric wire.

Trash is dumped into rivers and swept along until it finds something to cling to, building up over time.

Beautiful scenery spoiled by plastic.

Curious kids come inspect the Americans. Dilapidated buildings are often homes.

A peacock with strikingly beautiful plumage explores crates of empty glass beer bottles.

There are almost no dryers in Kosovo...

Because needlessly using electricity would lead to more of this from the coal plants.

An abandoned Serbian Orthodox church surrounded by barbed wire.

Communist style housing at the end of a rainbow.

Everyday, something is torn up or down in Kosovo only to be rebuilt in much the same vein.

Part of the Pristina skyline.

Street dogs roam wild all over the country searching for food to survive.

Roma kids collect firewood.

A delightful restaurant hidden in an old building in the middle of nowhere.

The coal stacks outside of the city.

Ad hoc post.

As a follow up to my photo montage last fall of the beauty of Kosovo, this group of photos shows the beauty of Kosovo with some kind of breakdown. Whether its poverty, pollution, corruption, or war, the Balkans is filled with beautiful scenes that often have something tragic about them.