Nicht Fallen

Nicht Fallen

Jošt Franko, 2023 Winner

Nicht Fallen follows disrupted peoples and landscapes across the former Yugoslavia, three decades after the break-up of the country launched a decade of conflicts and war among the six countries that emerged from its dissolution. It considers, engages with, and documents the aftermath not only as incomplete, but an ongoing history.
Hazira Đafić, when we first met in September 2017. Ježevac refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A diptych of Mrdići refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021. 
 
Mrdići is one of the most remote refugee settlements, which has housed displaced people since the 1990s. The settlement is located next to a coal mine, where most of the residents search for coal and sell it on the black market as their only source of income.

Mersudin, Davud, Anis, and Amar, the second and third generation of the displaced, play football in Karaula refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021.

Abaz. Višča refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. February 2023. 
 
Abaz and his wife Halida Dudić have lived in Višča refugee settlement since the 1990s, after Abaz was freed from a concentration camp in Vlasenica.

A wall in Abaz and Halida Dudić's apartment in Oskova refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. November 2019.

“How am I to know? I love you. I don’t know what has happened.”

 

Nena in Mihatovići refugee settlement (photograph with text) after being asked how she arrived at the settlement in the 1990s. Bosnia and Herzegovina. January 2020.

A diptych of Mirsada in Višča refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021.

Šugra Mustafić's image of her deceased husband who was killed in Srebrenica. Ježevac refugee settlement, Oskova, Bosnia and Herzegovina. September 2017.

Bosiljka (a sequence of photographs) in the refugee center named Barake (The Barracks). Zvornik, Bosnia and Herzegovina. January 2020.
 
Bosiljka is a double amputee and has been living in Barake since the late 1990s.

Karaula refugee settlement. Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021.

Hazira Đafić and her neighbours collecting wood logs before the winter (a sequence of photographs). Near Ježevac refugee settlement in Oskova, Bosnia and Herzegovina. September 2017.

 Detail of a wall from Pančevo refugee settlement, Serbia. March 2017.

Alan and Goran (a sequence of photographs) scavenging for metal at the Tuzla city dumpsite, Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2018.

Hazira washes her hands in a puddle, after looking for coal that she sells on the black market. Near Ježevac refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. November 2021.
 
“Coal is the bread and butter for us refugees,” she and her husband Zaim often say, as there are no opportunities for them to find regular employment.
Mirsada’s family. An empty frame in her apartment in Mihatovici. Bosnia and Herzegovina. February 2021. 
 
Mirsada does not have a single image of her family from before the war. “The empty frame,” she said “helps me imagine how life used to be”.
“What is there to see? Only wilderness. As if nobody had ever existed.” 
 
A portrait of Hazira (photograph with text), after she has visited her home village for the first time in 30 years. Ježevac refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. October 2020.
Merfin's obituary picture. Object collected in 2018.
 
Merfin fled to Tuzla, a safe-heaven during the war with his sister Hazira Đafić and lived in a refugee camp close to Tuzla. Ten years after the end of the war, he died stepping on a mine, while scavenging for wood in the forest.
Volcano in Ježevac. Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021. 
 
Because the local municipality does not pick up garbage from refugee settlements, the residents burn their waste. They call it the volcano of Ježevac.

Sky above Višča refugee settlement. Bosnia and Herzegovina. November 2021.

Hazira disposing ashes into Spreča river (super 8 film strip). Ježevac refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021.

Harun. Ježevac refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021.

Hello Kitty. Barake refugee settlement, Zvornik, Bosnia and Herzegovina. November 2021.

“This was Ševko’s first birthday. Two years later we were in the concentration camp in Vlasenica.” 
 
Nezira and her son Ševko Musić’s only photograph from before the war.
“When I sleep, sometimes I visit my home village.” 
 
Hazira on her doorstep (photograph with text) in Ježevac refugee settlement, Bosnia and Herzegovina. February 2023.
“When she fled, Nena first lived in Kiseljak, and then came to Mihatovići in 1998. She had four sons, but only one of them survived. She has suffered a lot. It was too much for her, all this sadness.” 
 
The account of Nena and her arrival to Mihatovići refugee settlement by her neighbour Nezira Musić. Bosnia and Herzegovina. January 2020.

Bosiljka Jakovljevič (a sequence of photographs) doing the dishes in the bathroom of the collective center in Pančevo, Serbia. She has been living in the collective center with her husband for over 20 years. March 2017.

Hazira and Zaim Alić in Ježevac refugee settlement. Bosnia and Herzegovina. February 2023.

Zaim Alić walks on a bridge next to his barrack in Ježevac refugee settlement. Oskova, Bosnia and Herzegovina. February 2020.

Spreča river, next to Ježevac. Bosnia and Herzegovina. March 2021.

Mihatovići refugee settlement. Bosnia and Herzegovina. January 2020.

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Photographer's Statement: 

Nicht Fallen is a long-term project that explores refuge and displacement, and works with residents of communities across the former Yugoslavia, who never found peace after the end of the war. Through photography, text, and various forms of collaboration with these individuals, who have remained in temporary refugee settlements for three decades, the project engages with and documents the precarity of everyday life in still active refugee camps across the region. As a project delving into the consequences of war, that has ravaged across former Yugoslavia, Nicht Fallen proposes to document and engage with the aftermath as not only incomplete, but as an ongoing history.

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Jošt Franko (b. 1993, Ljubljana) is a photographer and visual artist researching migrations, forced displacement, workers’ rights, counter narratives, and communal deliberations of precarious lives. Using photography, text, fieldwork, and collaborations as a form of engagement with social issues, his artistic practice focuses on the many lost, unspoken, or unheard narratives of displaced communities in the Balkan Peninsula. 
 
Franko is the recipient of a TED Fellowship, multiple Pulitzer Center grants, and has been a finalist for the Lange-Taylor Prize multiple times and won honorable mention from the Documentary Essay Prize. His work has been exhibited international in museums and festivals, including the New York Photo Festival (2010), Finnish Museum of Photography (2017), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška (2019), Museum of Modern Art Klagenfurt (2020), Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana +MSUM (2020), etc. Franko’s work has appeared in numerous national and international media outlets, including e-Flux, TIME Magazine (Jošt Franko, The Young Slovenian), The New Yorker (Jost Franko’s Disappearing Slovenia), The New York Times (A Glimpse of the Workers Who Make Our Clothes), La Repubblica, Washington Post, Delo, PDN, NPR, etc. 
 
He holds a Master’s degree from Goldsmiths and is a PhD candidate at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

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