ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 122

This is photo number 122, exactly one third of the way.

I met Hakija in Gašinci in late 1993.

I first went to Gašinci refugees camp in the beginning of 1993 as a volunteer organising activities for children (how I ended up going there is another story) and when I was there I realised that there was a great need for passport photographs. There were on average 3000 refugees at any one time in Gašinci but you always had people leaving as they got visas to go to Sweden, the United States, Australia etc. and new people arriving every week so pretty much everybody there was applying for passports, documents, visas or other things that would help them get out of the camp. All the applications required passport photos and it was almost impossible to get photos done.

I went back to Montolieu and raised money to buy all the equipment, film, paper and chemicals needed to set up a working darkroom and also a couple of cameras and drove back to Gašinci with Grant.

In Gašinci I organised a workshop to teach youngsters (I was pretty young myself so feels odd to call them youngsters) how to take photos, develop film and make prints. Once they learned, we went round the camp taking photos of people who needed passport photos. We didn’t have much film so we would take a photo of 3 or 4 people standing next to each other so each photo could make 3 or 4 passport photos.

My best “student” by far was Hakija, he learned quick and became a really good photographer and he carried on taking charge of the lab after I left. He was 18 then and 27 years later we are still in touch (also thanks to the fact that when my brother worked in Sarajevo, they met and also became good friends). He is now an Electrical Engineer and … a photographer.

I have been to Sarajevo a few times (Sarajevo is one of my favourite cities): the first time I came to Sarajevo was early 1996 (just a few months after the Dayton Agreement) driving down in rusty Mercedes limousines with Riaz’z dad, that’s another story, but Hakija moved to Sarajevo in late 1996. I went back to Sarajevo in March 1998, I am usually quite vague about dates but in this case I am pretty sure as Hakija took me to a Divlje Jagode concert on 08.03.1998.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tt58-jwRpY

Divlje Jagode were famous in the whole of Yugoslavia with their 1982 hit “Motori” and were the “Deep Purple” of Yugoslavia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv32c6q6slI

Anyway, he has always been my link with Sarajevo and I am always asking him to help me with some crazy art projects I have and he is always up for it. One of the things he does for me is help me get my Đezvas (Turkish coffee pots) engraved.

The last time I was in Sarajevo was in October 2016, I went there to try and find someone who would be up for doing remote “gatanje’ for me. I had a project for an exhibition in Bushwick where I would make Turkish coffee and get someone to read the coffee dregs. I couldn’t find anybody willing to do it but my searches led to interesting conversations and meetings, including something very magical that happened in Astoria, New York.

Anyway, that time, I met Ismet who is the guy with a shop/workshop in the Baščaršija who Hakija got to engrave my coffee pots. It was great to meet him in person.

I have been messaging Hakija today with loads of questions in order to get the facts as correct as possible: “how old were you when I met you?” “When was the Divlje Jagoda concert?” “Would you say that Divlje Jagode were the Led Zeppelin” of Yugoslavia?” “No, more like “Deep Purple” and I thought that it would be great to get a Đezvas engraved to commemorate “Susak expo 2020” which is most probably not going to happen”, he said that he will see what can be done.

It’s Ramazan (Ramadan) now and Hakija reminisced about how we fasted when we were in the camp and he reminded me that I wasn’t that bothered about not eating or drinking, it was not being able to smoke that was hard and that I had my packet of cigarettes ready and I would tell him that at Iftar I would smoke the whole packet.

Writing this post has reminded me of many more stories from these times I want to tell, like how II ended up going to Gašinci in the first place, I would like to tell you about Fatima Hrstic, about the Dulić family, about unintentionally and unsuccessfully trying to smuggle Bosnian refugees into Hungary (that stamp “permanently denied entry to Hungary” on my passport caused problems for years while crossing borders “why did you get this stamp?”), of course, that crazy drive to Sarajevo, meeting Kemal Monteno at a hair-dressers convention in Sarajevo. I just need to find the right photos to go with them.

I have plenty of time, I still have 244 days to go.

1.5.2020.

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