On The Margins
In the summer of the 1995 in an old, fenced-in, for many years disused and abandonedbuilding complex in the former East Berlin, a German comedy film came into the being.
In the district “Rummelsburg”, an institution for the care of sociallydisadvantaged and single mothers at the end of the 19th century and later theGerman Democratic Republic’s state security detention quarters, once more became aprison for two months. During filming, the prison’s inmates who, for a large part of thetime stayed in the cells, sat on a bench in the courtyard during breaks to havephotographic portraits made of themselves.
In two days the film production’s resident photographer, Nihad Nino Pušija, made 150portraits; which seek to embody, convincingly as well as characteristically thosequalities sought for during the casting process in refugee homes, soup-kitchens, Zoostation.
Pictured stereotypically the film’s subjects always sit on the same bench, theirbodies similarly deported, gazing directly into the camera and thus at the viewer, so thata seemingly endless series arises which may be extended to infinity.
These fictive criminals are also socially marginalised figure outside of the filmillusion, and are, like their photographer somehow stranded in Berlin. In everyday lifeone hurries past them, either no longer noticing them or paying no attention to them. Onesees them perhaps as one sees the picture one makes of them; one sees that which one wantsto see.
The photographer has portrayed these people compassionately, but withoutsentimentalizing heroisation. Instead he gives the spectator the opportunity to linger, toread the faces for their biographies’ traces, to discover details.
Nihad Nino Pušija photographs people. Transvestites, Gypsies, fugitives, fictitiouscriminals. They are all social outsiders or outcasts and they have, in common with theirphotographer, the ongoing search for their own identity, for “Heimat”.
To attain acceptance is a long journey, but one is never alone on it.
Patricia Rissman
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Nihad Nino Pušija
Born 1965, Sarajevo, Bosnia – Herzegovina
