Thursday 18 February 2016

Courage and dignity against the barbed wire


Warren Richardson took this photograph at the border from Serbia to Hungary on 28 August 2015; today it was awarded the World Press Photo of the Year 2015 prize. It may be read as a symbol of hope against the policies of Fortress Europe that have caused so many deaths of migrants and refugees. As Warren Richardson states on the World Press Photo webpage, the picture was taken "around three o’clock in the morning and you can’t use a flash while the police are trying to find these people, because I would just give them away. So I had to use the moonlight alone." In this sense, the picture embodies and underlines the actual political harshness that migrants and refugees are faced with, rather than turn them into a spectacle; and as such, it may also be read as a reflection on the politics of photography.

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