Introduction

Hello friends and family. We have all been hearing a lot recently about the “refugee crisis”. In 2015, more than a million migrants and refugees crossed the borders into Europe. The biggest driver of the migration is the conflict in Syria, but great numbers are also fleeing Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Kosovo.

Germany has received the highest number of people, with over 1 million by the end of 2015. I lived in Frankfurt Germany until I started college last Fall. I heard a lot about the refugees, but never felt a real need or desire to get personally involved somehow. When I was back in Frankfurt at Christmas time, however, I visited a refugee camp of 500, just 30 minutes from my house, and got to distribute gifts and food to many of the people. The crisis, literally at my doorstep, felt far more real to me after that point.

I will be learning more about the migrants and refugees all around us in the upcoming weeks, and will be recording my thoughts in this blog.

First, I want to introduce Sebastião Salgado. Sebastião is a Brazilian photographer who has dedicated the majority of his career to projects that focus on people and places of the world that many of us often overlook or misunderstand. For six years in forty countries, Sebastião worked with what he calls “humanity on the move”. This involved fugitives on the road, in refugee camps, or in slums. In a single black and white image, a snapshot of a moment, he can capture someone’s story. It is difficult to view one of Sebastião’s photographs and not be affected by it in some way. I have been deeply moved by his work. I will be writing more about him and what we can learn from him in subsequent posts.

Sebastião Salgado