…15:20…Sarajevo….i walked four steps into the room and took it. the shades were cracked open, framing the cityscape.
i’ve always wanted to stay at the former Holiday Inn in Sarajevo. from my first day at university until graduation, all the news we got about the war raging in the Balkans came from the reporters who were housed in the Holiday Inn. at a place i used to eat on campus called The Tavern, they had a television that broadcast CNN. a shocking war in the middle of Europe captured my imagination.
every broadcast during the three year Siege of Sarajevo seemed to have the Holiday Inn, which looked like it was built with yellow legos, in it. this hotel, built for the Winter Olympics just 10 years prior, was now sitting in the middle of Sniper Alley. later in my career i met photojournalists who covered the war, and everyone of them told me, you just walked into the Holiday Inn, and the war came to you.
this is my first night, and these walls have too many stories to tell. i could tell when i walked up the driveway and was dwarfed by this strange yellow Lego. i’ve tried for ten years to photograph stories about women and children who experienced the Siege of Sarajevo. all attempts lead to a dead end. tonight, i’m in Sarajevo to continue photographing my project about transgender and gender non-binary people. i had also tried to photograph this subject in Sarajevo for years and got nowhere. a couple of weeks ago, out of desperation, i tried again. i plan to photograph six people for the Embrace project. i’m always nervous the night before photograph. the doubts always creep in.
i haven’t met any of the people i’m photographing yet. my first portrait is in nine hours. but from my brief correspondence i know i’m going to learn from these six brave people. i have been in Sarajevo for eight hours. it’s a beautiful place and the people are friendly. but i’m not sure how accepting it is to the transgender and gender non-binary community. these six people already have my respect for being brave enough to share their story with me.
