In 1995, Skip Peterson was the chief photographer and was adept at covering big news events. Every day of the three weeks leading up to the signing of the Accords, someone was posted outside of the main gate of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, just in case anything happened or there were any developments in the talks. Many of those days, it was me.
But by design, photo opportunities were extremely rare. They chose WPAFB because they could isolate the delegates and limit any distractions and grandstanding by the parties involved in the talks. So most days, we parked outside the gate with little or nothing to do.
The only real action I saw in the weeks leading up to the signing was when a contingent of Albanians showed up to draw attention to the conflict brewing in Kosovo, a region of the Balkans controlled by Serbia where ethnic Albanians were being persecuted. At one point they snuck into the air base trying to reach the negotiators. They were swiftly escorted out but permitted to stage protests at the main gate which I dutifully documented.
The day of the signing, I was one of four DDN photographers among the hundreds of journalists covering the event. With all of us and numerous dignitaries from Dayton and surrounding communities, it was a full house to witness this historic event. I didn’t have the best position on the press platform, so it was difficult to get a clean shot of the initialing dais. (The peace agreement was only initialed in Dayton so the official signing could be done later in Paris.) It was crowded with the presidents of the three Balkan states, diplomats from Great Britain, France and the European Union, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary Richard Holbrook, as well as the various aides handling the documents. The atmosphere was solemn, if not grim.
Once the documents had all been initialed, the other photographers from our staff went back to the office to process and edit film. I volunteered to stay to photograph the rest of the ceremony.
With most of the press corps gone, I made my way to a shaky platform on the far right side of the stage to get a better angle. A videographer for one the national television networks cursed at me for the vibration I created when I stepped on the platform. From my new vantage point and with a telephoto lens, I was able to capture a photo of the three presidents isolated from the throng, with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic (left) lost in thought, looking toward my lens and the other two, Bosnian and Herzegovinia President Alijan Izetbegovic (center) and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman applauding the remarks of one of the speakers.
That photo later ran across two pages in Time Magazine to accompany their coverage of the Dayton Peace Accords.
Jan Underwood was a Dayton Daily News staff photographer from 1989 to 2011.
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