Refugee photography

January 29, 2009 - 2:18 PM by

Active VisionSince late 2006, an estimated 10,000 African refugees and asylum seekers have arrived in Israel, crossing the border with Egypt on foot. After a long period of not knowing what to do with these people, several governmental bodies have since begun assisting them via a variety of humanitarian projects.

NGOs have been paying attention as well, with initiatives like Fugee Fridays organizing grassroots efforts to bring food from the Carmel Market to hungry refugees. A related organization, called ActiveVision, offering activities and workshops for refugees in the digital visual media arts. Since the late summer, one workshop project called “Asylum City” has taught a group of pupils how to operate still and video cameras as tools for conveying a message. Assignments mostly focused on documenting the community of asylum seeking families living in Tel Aviv, with the results yielding a print publication and a photo exhibition.

As Fugee Fridays co-founder Daniel Cherrin puts it in a recent piece for Haaretz,

The [Asylum City] course was extremely successful and instructors were able to teach the importance of filmmaking and storytelling both in theory and in practice. As a result, some very interesting and important films were produced. The group thus also actively takes part in spreading the awareness of their own situation.

Many of the older images from Asylum City can be seen here, while the latest batch, including profiles of some of the photographers, can be seen here. A slideshow of images from the workshops themselves can be seen here. Last week, a photo exhibition opened at the Shapira Quarter home of Y Circus.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Category: A New Reality, Art, coexistence, Immigrant Moments 

Comments

One Comment on Refugee photography

  1. Updates & Media | Jesse Fox Blog on Sat, Jan 31st 2009 7:21 PM

    2. [...] 21C Israelity Blog published a post about Fugee Fridays and ActiveVision, and the video class that ActiveVision [...]

Leave a Comment





© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap