POZEGA PENITENTIARY, nestled in a quiet valley in eastern Croatia, is a beige-coloured block of a building. Some of the windows on its ground floor have been filled in with concrete, and a few wiry trees line its front driveway. Housing over 130 inmates, it is Croatia’s only correctional institution for women who have been convicted of serious crimes, with sentences of six months or longer.
Marina Paulenka, who grew up near Pozega, became fascinated by the institution after she met a few women who had been convicted on minor charges—such as traffic accidents and petty thefts—and sent to prison since they were unable to post bail. “I heard many interesting stories which I wanted to document,” she said.
Her efforts culminated in The Other Home, a stark photo series about Pozega, which she shot on monthly visits to the institution over a year and a half. Surprisingly, the series does not show a single prisoner. Instead, it depicts objects and furnishings: curtains rustling before an open window, a bra hanging on a shower wall, a jar of flowers on a desk. By focussing on such subjects, Paulenka aimed to explore the way the prisoners construct a home for themselves in Pozega—“but a completely distant and cold home.” The photographer also paid close attention to the way gender influences the women’s experiences, and organised the images into thematic clusters dealing with such things as “motherhood” and “femininity.”
Initially, Paulenka did not intend for the women to be absent from her photos. Her choices were constrained by Croatian law, which prohibits the filming or photographing of prisoners in any way that renders them identifiable. She planned to circumvent this by photographing the women’s shadows and silhouettes, but even that was rejected by the government bureaucrats who reviewed her proposal. “I am sure this was not out of sympathy with the prisoners,” Paulenka said, pointing out that the women themselves had even consented to being photographed without any such camouflage.
Paulenka spent a large amount of time getting to know the women. “I wanted to be one of them, in a sense,” she said. “To taste their food, to spend more time with them, to listen and to look around so that I could absorb the story in its entirety.” Many of them told Paulenka about the harsh judgment they faced in society; “They are stigmatised and marked forever,” she said, while men in their position are more likely to be given a “second chance.” Paulenka hopes that The Other Home will help transform such societal norms, but for now she is content with how she has touched and positively influenced the women at Pozega. “I already sent a few photographs to the inmates,” she said, “and they liked them.”