Photographer Tino regains his lost identity

Christina Schott, Contributor, Jakarta

The first thing Tino Djumini remembers in his life is sitting on a plane taking him from Jakarta to Amsterdam in the late 1970s, where his new adoptive family was waiting for him.

He remembers crying a lot on the journey, and the nurse who was with him calmed him down by giving him a piece of chocolate.

"I was too young to really understand what was happening. But I felt it might be something that was going to change my life", Tino said.

Even today, he still eats chocolate if he is sad -- and it still works.

According to his official data, Tino Djumini was born in a clinic in Kebun Kacang, Jakarta, on March 6, 1975, and given to an orphanage for adoption. Written on his birth certificate is the reason why he was up given up for adoption: His mother wanted him to have a better future in another country.

Four months ago, Tino found out the truth. After a long search, he received his first letter from a woman he believes to be his biological mother.

She told him he was actually born on Aug. 22, 1977, with the name Tino Djunana. She had not given him away voluntarily, but because of family pressure on her as an unmarried mother.

"All my life, I believed what was written on that paper. But my identity was invented by other people, by someone who just made up some facts," Tino said.

"So for me, identity is something constructed. And if getting an identity means becoming aware of being different, I sometimes don't want to have an identity."

In the Netherlands, he became Valentijn Gabrikl van Dijk, sixth child of a wealthy Dutch family. But he started to realize that he was different when he was about five years old.

That was when he first saw a photo of a small, wide-eyed Asian child, with "nice boy" written on the back. He was told that the boy was him, but he did not believe it.

In the following years, his light-skinned younger brother grew taller, while Tino with his dark skin seemed to stay forever small. He felt something was wrong with him.

"For a child, the visual aspect is important. I was raised in an environment where not so many colored people lived. Adoption was quite new by that time. So I was a bit like an alien."

Gradually, he became aware of the fact that he came from another country and the relationship with his parents was not a natural one. At the age of eight, he finally came to understand that he was adopted.

"I really felt a little angry about the fact that other people played with the identity of a child that didn't have any identity yet. My entire life was determined by what other people wanted."

So he started to make his own life. At 14, he acquired a cheap secondhand camera at a flea market and started taking photos. The motivation was to conserve every memory he could, since those of the first years of his life had already been lost.

He started documentation, not only with photos, but also with a diary that he continues to today.

"When I talk to friends who knew me as a teenager, they tell me I was always looking for something. Actually, I was trying to understand why people gave me away and others chose me. I wanted to find out, what if I hadn't been adopted or was placed with another family," Tino said.

"So I took photographs of what I could see from a distance and put it outside of me, although it was my own life. It is a feeling as if nothing is sure, as if I also could make up my own family."

Tino found his own language in pictures. Photography determined his life from the moment on, when his Dutch parents had selected him from his "nice boy" photo taken in the Jakarta orphanage.

It became almost an obsession.

"In daily life I didn't have roots, but in those photos I could meet my mother," said Tino, who went to the Arts Academy after studying philosophy.

It was also photography that brought him back to Indonesia in 2002 for the first time in 24 years.

"I always had the feeling that I wanted to go back to Indonesia, but I wanted to wait until the time was right," Tino said.

"Something inside told me, you have to be patient. I needed some kind of reason to get the feeling that I have to go."

Family portraits became the reason. First, the photographer looked for other adopted children from Indonesia and photographed them with their Dutch families. He found out that most of them, now young adults, came from the same period of 1973 to 1983 -- one whole generation of adoptees.

"It was because of the stories of all these other people that I knew myself better than ever. I understood that identity lies not only in yourself, but also in the people around you."

He came to this country to take pictures of local families, people he met by accident in the street.

"They all could have been my family as well. I could have taken pictures of the real families of the adopted people I portrayed before. But then I would have felt like stealing their dream! And in reality, I was also looking for my own mother."

Friends advised that he go on TV shows, but he did not want to be part of the maudlin stereotypes these kind of shows want to fulfill. In the end, he agreed that Femina women's magazine could publish his story.

Five months later, he was back in the Netherlands and had almost given up hope of ever getting an answer, when he got the letter from a woman who said she was his mother.

"At first I didn't believe it. There are a lot of mothers who had to give their children away and now, missing the child, would maybe like to be my mother. But then they sent me a tape with a conversation in which she was telling her story, and I realized that it could be true," Tino said, nervously tapping on the table.

Two months ago, mother and son met for the first time. Since then they have met a couple more times, trying to get used to each other and bridging those missing 25 years.

After she gave Tino away, his mother got married but she could not have children. Tino remains her only child.

"For me the idea of a mother became floating. In daily life I don't think about genetics or visuals anymore. A mother is someone who acts like a mother," Tino said.

"This woman chose to be my mother. And I know this means she was really brave, because she was the only one responding to that article. And somehow I feel very close to her."

In Hollywood, there would now be the usual happy ending. But real life is not that easy. Tino has two families in two countries. In both he feels an outsider -- in the Dutch one, because of his different blood, in the Indonesian one, because of his different education and background.

"I am really grateful to my Dutch parents, because they took care of me and they did their best," Tino said. "But you can't give back someone's memories. Those years are just gone. And now I just met my Indonesian family, but I don't know them yet. I don't really feel that I have a family. They are only in pictures for me."

Tino is planning to stay in Indonesia for a long time, on a continuing journey to discover his identity.

The exhibition "Nice Boy" by Tino Djumini is at Kedai Kebun Forum Yogyakarta until Nov. 13.