Unseen America, a project that gives cameras to people from all walks of life for a few weeks and asks them to tell their stories through the pictures, is working with the refugees in Utica.
I attended one of the classes and it was wonderful to see the pictures. Many were portraits, some were of the food they cooked, yet all photos reflect their dilemmas, struggles and travails of the life they live here - a life so different from the one they had been living.
The new life has credit cards...plastic money, washers and driers and insurance problems among other things. And it is baffling. Most have not seen electricity, many lived in jungles and almost all have not used credit cards ever...
The links to the articles on unseenamerica NYS and its work with the refugees in the area that were published by Utica Observer-Dispatch Sunday March 18, 2007
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180323/1001
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180315/1001
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180317/1001
I am also copying the text of the articles that appeared in Observer-Dispatch. There is also a photo gallery of the pictures clicked by two refugees and a narrative by a Bosnian refugee who talks about her refugee experience.
Refugees capture new lives through a camera (link to slideshow)
Photos reflect life in Utica and hint at their homelands
March 18, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
UTICA — As a child growing up in Bosnia, Tatjana Kulalic climbed her country's mountains, looked at the city in the distance and felt free. In the civil war that later ravaged her country, she lost that feeling and was forced to remain within the city limits for four years.
She recently revisited her past through photographs of Utica she took as part of the unseenamerica NYS project. She climbed up the hills in Roscoe-Conkling Park, took out a camera and started clicking pictures of Utica's horizon.
"It has a connection with Bosnia," she said, pointing at a picture of the city in the distance, silhouetted against the gray sky. "That picture ... gives me a feeling of freedom, peace and connection. That picture is home."
Kulalic is one of 15 refugees who attended a photography workshop organized by unseenamerica NYS, a project that gives cameras to working-class people so they can document their lives through photographs and be creative as a subject and photographer.
The organization is working with the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees to schedule an exhibition of the photographs for April 20.
The refugees are asked to answer various questions such as "Who are you?" or "What is home?" through their pictures. In doing so, they tell their stories and feelings about living in a different country, said Zoeann Murphy, the regional coordinator of unseenamerica NYS.
Peter Vogelaar, the executive director of the refugee center, said the project will help showcase Utica's diversity.
"It is wonderful," he said.
Connie Frisbee Houde, a photographer who helped refugees with the project, said she was surprised with the pictures' variety and storytelling.
Her favorite is a photograph of a curtain and a wall defining public and private space, she said. Many refugees belong to vastly different cultures and notions of what is private and public differ greatly.
Curtains divide the inner sanctums of the house from what is considered public space where guests can be ushered in, Murphy said.
"Refugees have a very different relationship to the concept of home," she said.
Many pictures describe the experience of being a refugee. One of Kulalic's pictures show an African man dressed in traditional clothes sleeping in the waiting room at the refugee center. It is a contrast of old and new and also of the eternal wait for refugees, she said.
"As refugees we are always waiting for something to happen — some good news, some money," she said.
The refugees enrolled in this program are from Sudan, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Bosnia and Somalia. The pictures, whether of traditional fish curry or snow banks, somehow tie into their experiences and impressions as a refugee.
Sudanese refugees Chambang Mut and Abdelshakour Khamis brought out the contrast in their lives by capturing the snow and the city's buildings, which are starkly different from what they experienced in Africa.
"I clicked pictures of the snow because we don't have that in Sudan," Mut said.
Another picture showed his co-worker at Price Chopper dancing and laughing with a broom.
"Sometimes the work is exhausting," he said. "He was just happy at work. It was good."
Abdelshakour Khamis, a Sudanese refugee, remembers when he woke up on his first morning in Utica and saw the city engulfed in fog.
He was transported back to his country where sandstorms blurred the skyline of the city. Many of his pictures are of Utica's skyline.
"I took them because they remind me I am here and reminds me of home," he said. "The hills at the back reminded of old home but the foreground was new."
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Tatjana Kulalic shuttles between two worlds.
March 18, 2007
UTICA — Tatjana Kulalic shuttles between two worlds.
Her roots are in Bosnia, which she left in 1999 after a civil war divided the country. But her house and job are in the Mohawk Valley.
"I am somewhere in between," she said. "I belong but I don't really belong. There is a conflict."
Kulalic's photographs as part of the unseenamerica NYS project capture some of the nostalgia and dilemmas of a refugee and immigrant.
She drives around the area trying to find places that resemble Bosnia, she said. In the seven years, Kulalic has been to Bosnia only once and found it was different.
It wasn't the only thing she noticed was different.
"I found myself changed," she said. "You take influences from here with you. It becomes different."
Despite living here for years, buying furniture and creating her own space, she still doesn't have the feeling she's here to stay.
"It seems temporary. I feel I am waiting for something," she said. "I could be somewhere else."
Like many immigrants, coming into a different culture was stressful. Adapting to it took time.
The credit cards, the insurance and the family system — everything was different. Although she learned English at school, the language was still a barrier.
The culture was different, too. The emphasis on individualism did not match with her experience. In Bosnia, families are tied together, she said.
Kulalic spends as much time as possible with her son Isak, going on trips, taking him fishing and just hanging out with him.
But outside home, things were new and different. But she learned.
Now, she works at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees in the immigration department and helps sort out immigration and visa issues.
The connections with her past life are important to her. She cooks Bosnian food, reads Bosnian books and talks to Isak in Bosnian to keep the bonds intact. Her house has many artifacts from Bosnia that are still her prized possessions, she said.
"We talk about our country, we look at photographs," she said. "I don't want to lose touch."
— Chinki Sinha
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Sudanese refugee enjoys freedom
March 18, 2007
UTICA — Sudanese refugee Chambang Mut would like to call himself an American — he holds an American passport and is living the American dream. But when people classify him, there's always a hyphen attached.
"I am always African-American or Sudanese-American," he said. "Here in American culture, they put people in categories."
But he's not complaining. He likes America and his freedom here.
"Nobody can tell me 'shut up' here," he said.
His photographs, part of the unseenamerica NYS project, capture new experiences for him such as the snow, the work culture and his used car.
Mut, who came to the United States in 1995 from Uganda where he was studying, misses home. Like many others, though, he has little left to go back to.
His parents have died and there aren't many opportunities in Sudan, where rival factions are still waging war. Two civil wars have already ravaged Sudan, making millions flee to neighboring countries for safety.
Mut, who left his village in November 1984, never saw his family again. He could just talk to them on the phone, he said.
"I do miss home very bad," he said. "But I like it here. Things are easy here if you want to work. Getting jobs is difficult at home."
Adapting to America was not easy for Mut, who had to re-learn English because the accent was difficult to understand. Even now it is frustrating trying to get himself understood, he said.
One example: Mut ended up paying a lot to a car mechanic because both had a problem in understanding each other, he said.
A Sudanese flag shares the space with an American flag on his desk in his room. Like many Americans, Mut is studying and working at the same time. He has taken out loans, works odd jobs and is determined to make it big here.
"Maybe I will become a counselor or maybe a politician ... or a teacher ... something," said Mut, who is a sociology student at SUNYIT.
— Chinki Sinha
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
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