TITLE: Nowhere Land

2013 I started to take images of unaccompanied minor refugees.

2014 more and more refugees were crossing the German borders,

everything seemed to get out of balance then.

The authorities tried to keep control over the situation,

one of their measures was to keep me out of the now utterly

crowded camp, where I had had visited the unaccompanied minor

refugees.

One year later countless smaller camps popped up all over

Germany, two of them in my little posh suburban community.

Quite a lot of citizens started to help these strangers around.

An association (Verein) was founded, a chairman elected, 

lots of different committees founded, some of them collected

clothes, others fixed bikes, some started to teach German to all

these strangers.

I became a part of this group, partly out of curiosity,

partly because I was hoping to pick up my photographic project

again.

We held parties then for the refugees, tried to help them going to

school, find jobs and to learn a profession.

Some of the refugees soon found work,

and a while later a few of them started with apprenticeships.

Those were the good times.

Over the years an extremist right wing party got some popularity,

and the main right-wing party, here in Bavaria, afraid of losing votes,

turned more and more restrictive on the refugees.

Those who are not accepted as asylum seekers under the German

asylum laws, are now condemned to do nothing.

They lost their working permits.

There are no regular schools for them.

Those of them who had jobs, now lost them.

Those who could have learned a profession,

are not allowed to do that anymore.

Day and night, they hang around now in their noisy

and cramped mass accommodations,

waiting for nothing to come.

AUTHOR: Zoltán Jókay (Germany)

1960 Born in Munich
1984-1993 Studied communication design
with main focus on photography
at the University/GH Essen


Prizes and Scholarships

2012 Shortlisted for the European Publisher Award
2011 Scholarship by the Stiftung Kunstfonds
2011 International Photography Award Emergentes DST
1999 Prize for Photography of the city of Munich (cat.)
1995 Aenne Biermann prize for Contemporary German Photography
1994 Art Promotion Grant of the City of Munich
1990 Scholarship for Contemporary German Photography of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung


Residencies

2017 “Artist in residence” Valparaiso, Chile,
grant by the FIFV and the Goethe Institut
2009 „Artist in residence“ La Paz, grant by the Goethe-Institut
2003 „Artist in residence“ Rottweil, Fremde Heimat –five artists from five continents (cat.)
2002 „Artist in residence“ Budapest, grant by the city of Munich
2000 „Artist in residence“ Ravensburg (cat.)
1995 „Artist in residence“ Fotofeis, Edinburgh