“Foreigner”
Thomas Saxby and Daniel Castro Garcia documented migrants waiting in temporary settlements in Italy, Calais, the Balkans, and Greece. Hoping to change the imagery used in migration reportage, Saxby and Garcia approached the portraits as a way to empower rather than judge. They are now preparing to publish the portraits in the upcoming book, ‘Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016.'
EvH: Your Kickstarter explains the book as documenting people in various stages of their migration to Europe. Can you please expand a little on the concept of your project for our readers? How did the idea for the project arise?
Daniel Castro Garcia & Thomas Saxby: The idea for the book began in April 2015 when, in the space of a week, nearly one thousand people drowned in the Mediterranean Sea attempting to reach the Italian Island of Lampedusa. We were both touched by the human tragedy of this event, and curious to go to one of the remotest frontiers of Europe and meet the people that were risking their lives to get there.
We also felt at the time, that the imagery used in the media to tell the story, was sensationalist, alarmist and wasn’t giving these individuals the time and consideration they deserved. We felt there was more to the story than what we were being shown and wanted examine the situation in a different light, outside of the context of a newspaper article. In essence, we used portrait photography as a means of meeting the people at the centre the crisis face to face, of learning something about their lives, and as a tool for empowerment rather than judgement.
EvH: Over what time period did you document your subjects? How much time were you able to spend in these communities?
Daniel Castro Garcia: This book is the culmination of a year’s work, our first trip to Lampedusa and Sicily being in May 2015. During that period we made various trips that totaled about five weeks in Italy, five weeks in Calais and a month and a half in the Balkans and Greece.
Our time with people varied considerably depending on the part of Europe we were in. In Catania, Sicily for example, we ended up spending a lot of time with the same people, because there were so many aspects of migration happening in the same place. Catania is a city with a large african community where many men that arrive to Sicily decide to stay and look for jobs and wait for a work permit. At the same time rescue boats arrived every few days with 1,500 passengers on board and transferred people to the C.A.R.A. di Mineo reception centre, which housed migrants and refugees that had been living there for up to 18 months. Of all the places visited, Catania is where I have developed the strongest relationships and have been able to push the creative nature in this project.
In Calais I would also see the same people every day, even just to say hello or have a tea. My main aim was to connect with the people I was meeting and to demonstrate that my interest in their situation was one of concern and seriousness. I never treated this project as a news story. Because the work is mainly portraiture based, interactions are always intimate, patient experiences that are about relationships and building bridges.
EvH: Certainly in the U.S. there has been a seeming spike in public anti-immigrant language recently, but I think the trend is a common one around the world. Was the burden of these attitudes present at all in your conversations with your subjects?
DCG: In general I found that people didn’t think much about this kind of social issue until they were in places that presented a form of dead end to them. In Calais, the racial tension was far more prevalent than in Greece. Police brutality has been a serious issue there, that only seems to intensify with the passing of time. On a personal level, I consider much of what I have seen and researched to be truly unacceptable. I feel that Europe has a lot to answer for with its handling of this situation. Tear gassing crowds of men, women and children, and holding people in fields with no food or water for days on end can not be deemed acceptable in any circumstance. The scenes like this that I witnessed in the Balkans were particularly hard to understand, given the scenes of refugee movement that were witnessed in the region’s relatively recent history, during the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Thomas Saxby: I had a similar experience to Daniel, in the sense that the issue of anti-immigrant sentiment back in the UK did not come up in any of my conversations. I think that during migration, people are cut off from the media in the societies they are hoping to be part of. There is no real way for them to see the anti-immigrant attitudes that may exist. What is much more obvious, as Daniel mentions, is the hostility towards them at a state level. The treatment they receive from police and governments makes the it very clear that they are not wanted.
I would also say that personally, that anti-immigrant feelings in the UK was not something I wanted to talk to people about. I preferred to ask questions, and listen.
EvH: What were some other things you heard from them, or interactions you had, that have stayed with you?
TS: I remember being in Mineo (a small town just near a large migrant holding camp in Sicily), talking with a young Gambian man called Musa and some of his friends. Talk quickly turned to home, and the fact that it had been several weeks since any of their families had had news of them. We offered a call from our cell phones, and watched as they spoke to their mothers, fathers, sisters and friends. The words were foreign but the happiness, relief and longing was immediately recognisable and heart warming. It was a reminder of how much they had left behind, and a demonstration of how something that I took for granted could, in the context of the camp, be hugely important.
DCG: For me the list is endless, however I would have to highlight the feeling of meeting people and then reconnecting with them again after months, weeks or days. Sometimes in the same, sometimes in a different one. This happened several times as I visited and revisited Gucci, a 26 year old Senegalese boy living in Catania. It happened when I met Medani, an Eritrean refugee, in Catania in June 2015, and then met him again by chance in Calais in December 2015. It also happened with Kimya, a 12 year old Iranian girl that I photographed when she arrived in Lesvos, and later photographed in Berlin. In each situation it was amazing to feel that we both cared for each other, and that photography in many ways was not important any more, it was simply the method that enabled us to express our feelings. What mattered most was our relationship.
EvH: Can you please describe one or two of your favorite images from the project, and the situation surrounding them? What makes them lucky or rare to you?
DCG: This is an extremely difficult question to answer because I have such a strong connection to all of the images. There are styles of photograph that reappear during the collection that I am particularly fond of. Instances where I have photographed the same person in different situations, and managed capture the same expression in their eyes, or similar scenes and settings in different locations that provoked a sense of deja vu. I also value some of the photographs as part of a body of evidence that either show scars of war, scenes of mistreatment or the changing architecture and infrastructure of camps such as the Jungle in Calais. If I had to choose, I would say that the portrait of Madia with the red mesh over his head in Catania, and Abraham praying in the Jungle in Calais were my favourite.
Madia is a young Senegalese boy that saw his best friend, Sana, get shot in the head by people smugglers in Libya. Madia and I talked at great length about this event and the impact it caused him and together we wanted to find a way for him to express himself in a portrait that we could dedicate to Sana.
Abraham allowed me to photograph his prayer ritual which was a particularly important moment for me. Of all of the images in the collection I feel this one demonstrates the greatest sense of determination, courage and strength. It also made me think harder about the role of religion in this story. I feel that the growing fear of Islam in Europe has been accentuated greatly in opinion columns that insinuate some sort of take over in the western world. The cold, hard reality of what I saw, was that faith was a tool that helped people carry on, one more day, with hope and peace.
TS: I would say that the experience of photographing a peaceful protest in Calais was the most significant for me. It was organised to honour the death of Youssef — a young Sudanese man who had been hit by a car on the highway near the channel tunnel and found dead a few days earlier. More than anything else we had seen, that protest demonstrated to me that photography is a way of communicating with the rest of the world. And that when you feel ignored or in need of help, the opportunity to do so becomes precious. One banner read “Europe, do you hear our call from Calais?”. As I looked at the three or four other photographers around me, I realised that if we had not been there, the rest of the world would have no way of knowing that this protest had ever taken place, and no way of hearing.
EvH: Who or what are some of your visual influences and inspirations for these portraits?
DCG: I am fascinated by all types of photography so it is difficult to be precise about who the individual references are, however I would say that I spend a lot of time looking at Magnum photographers and other classic war/street photographers. Equally every situation is different and subsequently my approach changes.
TS: As far as the book design goes, we were influenced by the visual language of passports. It was a way to subtly underline the concept of freedom of movement, which is at the heart of the ‘migrant crisis’. The typographic elements are based on those found in passports, and the inclusion of the maps again came from looking at the illustrations found inside them.
EvH: Where in the world would you like to go next to work on a project? What’s left on your creative wish list?
DCG: There are so many ideas that we would like to achieve. We are definitely planning to return to Catania to continue our work with our friends there. We are looking at the idea of providing cameras for people and enabling them to document their experiences in the city. This would be a long term project, but we hope that by providing people with the right tools they will be able to express ideas and show us places that might not be so easy for us to capture. We are motivated by the idea of collaboration, sharing and doing what we can to enable those we have met to have their voices heard.
We will no doubt be continuing our work on the migrant/refugee crisis for many years to come, however we do have other sensibilities that interest us greatly such as music artwork and video projects. We are also passionate about book making, so we hope that in the future we will be able to continue produce projects in book format, and pay as much attention to the book design as to the images inside them.
TS: I think the idea of ‘sub-cultures’ is important to our work. So the opportunity to meet a new group of people, no matter where they are, will always be of interest to us. We will continue to work on the topic of migration indefinitely, as the more time spent on the topic can only lead to deeper insights. But as Daniel said, this project will continue alongside our commercial work, because if we were to focus solely on either one or the other, I don’t think we would be fully expressing our personalities.
John Radcliffe Studio is the creative partnership of Thomas Saxby and Daniel Castro Garcia. Follow Daniel and Tom on Instagram.
Emily von Hoffmann is a Durham, North Carolina-based writer. Follow her on Twitter.
