Sahin Sisic, born in Visegrad-Medjedja, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1961. After attending grammar and high school in Sarajevo, Sisic studied film at the Academy for Film and Drama in 1988 in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated in 1988 and a year later, his first short film, "Margina 88, " won the gold medal at the Yugoslav Documentary and Short Film Festival in Belgrade and the Golden FIPA (Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels) Award at Cannes. Since then, Sisic has worked on several projects as director and director of photography, collaborating with TV crews from all over the world on various films throughout the world. In 1995, his thirty-minute documentary film, Planet Sarajevo, received much attention and won several prizes at various film festivals worldwide.

Sahin now lives in the Breda, Netherlands where he runs his own art photo and film galery. He is currently writing the screenplay for a feature film and new book of photography 'E Romenge Fotografie' (to see some of the photos click on the article immage). We caught up with Sahin and managed to get few questions answered by him.

BC: What does the photography means to you?

S: The photography is an integral part of me, and with the photography I live and interact with the world around me.

Q: What made you to choose the photography as a profession?

S: That is a matter of destiny, some kind of world that is becoming real inside of me since birth. You are not conscious of all the things that shape your growing, and in one period of life you get in touch with the photo camera and photography, and slowly that becomes your obsession. You are discovering your own self, your own way of expression, and beginning to create through photography these things that are inside of you. Actually, I was doing my own self portrait, while taking photos of others.

BC: Who are the role models?

S: In the beginning of my experiment with the photography I was not cognizant of any role models. Simply, all the information you get through time, in the photo club, from friends and colleagues, interactions with the surroundings in the place where you are growing; all of that is coming together as a puzzle in one picture, your own photography. Because of that, I like to see photos of the authors who bring something personal, own view, own moment or poetry that I can feel from their photography. In line of all this I can mention, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau (with his famous saying that "flowers between the train tracks are prettier then the ones in a vase"), Walker Evans, W. Eugene Smith, Joseph Koudelka. From the modern authors I can mention Lachapelle, Japanese’s photographer Araki, Dutch Erwin Olaf … I don’t necessarily like the entire opus of those authors, but some of their series, or some of individual photos they did, impacted me.

BC: Why them?

S: That is simply the question of feelings, you can glimpse how they see the world around themselves, you can feel some sentiment in their works, or their photography language means something to you.

BC: Which form of the photography you like the most?

S: Simply, I like photography that speaks straightforwardly about the people, no matter in what situation he or she can be. Especially those photos that include something personal from the photographer, his own thumbprint. I believe in the individual worldview that photographer is projecting in his works.

BC: What is it in photography that we should pay attention to?

S: “What is it in a book that a person should pay attention to …” Photography is a simple language expressed through the picture, the direct language, the exact, particular language that has to connect with the eyes of the viewers, soul of the people.

BC: Black and white photography vs. color photography? How do you see advantages and disadvantages of both?

S: It does not matter. The question is how you are expressing yourself, and where are your strengths and weakness. First ten years I was doing mostly black and white, and only rarely, color photography. Since I went to India in 1990, I changed and began doing mostly color, and only occasionally, go back to b&w photography. To me personally, color gives me more possibilities to enjoy the creation and experience emotions.

BC: Do you have any advice regarding developing b&w photography?

S: Find your own system, meaning find out which type of film you like, which exposures, chemicals you like to use to develop film or prints. Once you develop your own system, keep your system in the laboratory constantly. If you like the results, if the prints have all the scales that you like, contrast, black and white areas, grey to your taste, then concentrate on taking good shots.

The above article was first published on: March 11, 2008

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Following are excerpts from Washington Post's presentation on a book by Leslie Fratkin. The book is about the several Bosnian photographers who worked in Sarajevo during the war, in which the work of Sahin is included:

"Sahin: There's one series I took just before the war – looking at it you get a sense that something ominous is about to happen. I started to hear all this bad news about fighting taking place over land, our territory – the strongest pushing around the weakest. But I didn't believe that a real war would actually start at all – and I especially didn't believe that it would start in Sarajevo.

The first bombing that took place, that first May bombing, was a total shock. I don't have any of it on film. I didn't even think about making any kind of photographs. There was something else going on inside of me. It ceased to be important that I make an important film. What was happening outside was bigger than all of that and there was this monologue that started working in my head, demanding answers to all sorts of questions that I can't begin to answer, even now, right here at this table: why would you cover a city with as many bombs as they did? How does fascism get so out of hand?

I was watching, carefully, of course. But it wasn't my first instinct to pick up a camera. I began to realize, however, that if I'm watching from behind a camera, somehow I wasn't as scared. The camera made me feel stronger."

Documentary "Planet Sarajevo" (BC Exclusive):